Scarlet Plume, Second Edition

by Frederick Manfred

  Scarlet Plume’s stoic self-control cracked once. It happened when Judith brought him a tin of river water as they rode along. For a brief moment he looked at her, black eyes radiant with love. It set her to blushing, making her look down, and she thought, “Please, do not look at me so, my husband.” Trembles chased through her limbs, so that she was afraid she would fall off her horse. It was as if, safely on his way to a white man’s scaffold, Scarlet Plume had for one moment at last felt free to let her see how he really felt about her.

  Manic moods ravished her. One moment she was in despair when she thought of Scarlet Plume being hanged like a common criminal; the next moment she was in heaven when she remembered the burning thrill of his lovemaking. He was going to die; he had to be saved somehow.

  The procession stopped to water the horses. The red friendlies went among the whites and put on begging dances in behalf of the chained wretches. It was cold, the ground was frozen, and the little red children wore jackrabbit skins inside their moccasins. The little red ones continued to skirl happily in and out of the entourage.

  The whites paid little attention. The soldiers were looking forward to drinking New Ulm beer. New Ulm beer was reputed to be sweet because it had been made out of spring water running off old green rock.

  When the soldiers did remark on the red captives, it was always in scorn. “I hear the Gen’ral gave orders we ain’t supposed to shoot ’um down with a shotgun no more.”

  “No?”

  “Says it tears ’um up so bad.”

  “Hum. That it does.”

  “Well, the Gen’ral is welcome to his job. I know I wouldn’t want to swap saliva with that mangy crowd over a peace pipe.”

  “What are we going to do with ’um now that we’ve won and are going to hang the bucks? It seems horrible to think of leaving their wives and kids behind to certain starvation.”

  “Me, I’m for killin’ the whole lot of them. Bucks, squaws, kits. They’re like rattlesnakes. The less you have around, the safer it makes the country.”

  “What about the pretty little red rattler girls, eh? I see our boys don’t mind splitting a little red oak nights now and then. ’Specially with the little red virgins so willing to wriggle out of their camp and meet you halfway in a holler somewhere.”

  “Welll.”

  “Heard some of the white women talking yestiddy. That Alva Axtell in pa’ticular. She said she would crush out even the little baby brains, if she had her way. Wouldn’t let one of them go. Lord, the way that Alva Axtell talked. As bad as any female savage I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s an awful fix, all right. I pity those who have to decide the matter.”

  Judith couldn’t resist making a biting remark. “Not all white women think like Alva Axtell. I say the worst Indians I ever met were the white people living on the border.”

  One of the soldiers gave Judith’s Indian dress a look. “Lady, have you ever seen the Sioux go into battle? Like they did a couple of weeks ago at Wood Lake? No?” The soldier shivered at the recollection. “They go in like bees swarming out of a hive. God. They won’t show fair fight any way you fix it, the mean varmints. I say they’ll never behave themselves until we give ’um a clean out-and-out licking. The only way to treat the Indian is to sculp about half of ’um, then the balance will sorter take to you and behave themselves.”

  “Yes,” Judith said. “When the white man fights for his life he can take comfort in the sure hope of victory. But when the red man fights for his life he knows for a fact that he’s going to die no matter how hard he battles.”

  The soldier gave her Indian garb another look, then his bearded face closed over.

  The procession moved on.

  The line of bluffs eventually curved away from the river. Between the bluffs and the bottoms lay a wide shelf of land and on it stood what was left of New Ulm. Brick stores and a few wooden homes had somehow survived a fiery Indian holocaust. Cellars gaped on all sides, gray with tumbles of ashes.

  At the first sight of the fire-blackened settlement below them, the friendlies recoiled and hung back, falling behind the line of marchers. The mounted soldiers and the line of wagons bearing the prisoners, however, rolled inevitably onward, going down the bluff. The flag of the Union fluttered high above the lead wagon.

  Judith was riding with the friendlies at the time and it scared her to see how they shied away from going through New Ulm. From the friendlies she heard talk of how certain Sioux hostiles, now gone west, had made particularly ferocious attacks on the German settlers, killing and scalping many. The Sioux referred to the Germans as “Those Who Speak The Bad Language” or the “Bad Talkers.” Looking down onto the wide shelf of land, Judith saw that the New Ulm survivors had emerged from their huts and their holes and had lined up on a high bank overlooking the road. Someone had alerted them that the army was coming through with red prisoners.

  Judith knew it meant trouble. She handed Johnnie over to Ted and trotted up to where Scarlet Plume rode in the last wagon.

  It was nearly noon. A cold north wind whistled through a cottonwood grove in the river bottoms. An occasional snowflake drifted down from what otherwise appeared to be a clear blue sky.

  The head of the line descended below the bank on which the New Ulm Bad Talkers stood. The New Ulm grownups stood up front, with the children pushed back on higher ground. The men came armed with guns and clubs and pitchforks, the women with glistening butcher knives and aprons full of stones. They wore a crazy-quilt mixture of clothes: brown, gray, black, red. Some had even dug out their wedding clothes from storage. It was all they had left.

  General Sibley spotted impending trouble too. He urged the infantry to hurry up and form a wall of protection between the captive Sioux and the Bad Talkers.

  But the General saw it too late.

  Four of the bolder red children were still racing in and out of the line of march, incongruously crying, “Sibilee! Sibilee!” It happened that two New Ulm boys, more adventurous than the rest, and wanting to get a close-up of the passing entourage, had hidden themselves in a clump of honeysuckles immediately alongside the trail. The four red children, chasing each other with play bows and arrows, flushed them.

  The four red children stopped dead in their tracks, staring, their black eyes suddenly gleaming like obsidian arrows. The two white boys also stared, their blue eyes suddenly shining like the eyes of surprised fawns.

  There was a long moment of silence. Even the shrieking axles seemed muted. Everybody gaped.

  One of the red boys, named Already Bold, said quietly in Sioux to the white boys, “It is a good thing to see the enemy. Let us play war. Do you have the toy guns?” Smiling, Already Bold held up his play bow and quiver of arrows.

  The face of the shorter of the two white boys opened and he began to screech.

  The cry struck the mother chord in every female breast within earshot. Judith herself felt her bowels constrict within her and for a second was inflamed with a violent hate for the red children.

  The Bad Talkers let go with a barking roar. Dough bellies bouncing, the wives came down the slope like a bumping avalanche. Butcher knives flashed. Stones flew. Beer bellies humping, the German men came right behind them, yelling like a mob of Beowulfs. Blue guns glinted. Pitchforks shone.

  The six children, two white and four red, stood transfixed yet another second, then dove for safety. They flew through the air like frogs. Grass closed over them.

  General Sibley bawled an order. Gold braid gleamed. The thin line of blue mounted men stiffened.

  But the rush of the wolf women and their pioneer husbands was too strong. They overwhelmed the guard, and in the flick of an eye the Bad Talkers were up and into the wagons. Shrieking vile abuse, they hauled and pulled at the shackled red wretches, clubbing them, stabbing at them with forks, slashing at them with butcher knives. Flying stones hit captive and captor alike. One woman came running with a bucket of scalding-hot water. Many of the prisoners were knocked senseless. Bla
ck heads streamed rivulets of blood. One brave was hit so hard he fell backward out of the wagon, dragging with him his shackled mate. The werewolf women soon exhausted their supply of stones, took to dancing in the grass instead. They hopped about like fat mad witches, faces all a toothy snarl, fingers clawing the air, voices shrill. All mouths squared up in violent vituperation, donnernd.

  Scarlet Plume accepted the mayhem at the hands of the New Ulm mothers much as he might have accepted mutilation at the hands of hated Chippewa mothers. It was what savage mothers were expected to do with captives. The rest of the captives also bore it with calm equanimity. A few of those stabbed began to chant the death song, blood frothing on their copper lips.

  One tall New Ulm mother, about thirty, with hair almost the same sunned hue as Judith’s, became a true scourge. She ripped the air with a continuous piercing ear-splitting tenor falsetto. Wielding the longest butcher knife of all, she managed to clamber into Scarlet Plume’s wagon and began to flourish her glittering blade left and right so ferociously that no soldier dared disarm her. Some New Ulm men, still on the ground, spotted her charge and immediately let go with a great guttural cry. “Schlachtvieh, Gerda! Schlachtvieh, Gerda!”

  Gerda struck down three red captives, cutting them across the back and shoulder and upper arm. She cut one so deep across the belly, he burst open and his bowels began to pour out like hominy grits boiling over.

  Gerda next went for Antheap, the smallpox-pitted Sioux shackled to Scarlet Plume. Antheap ducked, and Gerda missed. Gerda’s momentum carried her up against Scarlet Plume, her head butting into his belly.

  Scarlet Plume grunted. His eyes opened in some surprise at the quality of her blond hair. “Hoka-hey,” he ejaculated in Dakota, as if it was a thing hard to believe. “The Bad Talkers have also a wakan one with sunned hair.”

  Gerda drew back at the sound of his savage voice. She glared at him with such hate that her eyes resembled ice crystals. She knew a few Sioux words. “You speak wild man!”

  Scarlet Plume permitted himself a smile. To him the greatest barbarity of all was the spectacle of a German trying to talk Dakota. High scorn showed in his eyes. He crossed his arms on his chest. His single scarlet feather snapped, once. “Ha! Is it wonderful that I should speak the language of my mother?”

  Gerda’s lips foamed. She went into such a rage she was like a wolf with rabies. Shrilling, she slashed at him with her knife. He drew back just in time and her knife flashed past. But she still came near enough to rip his red-and-black blanket and cut the belt to his breechclout.

  “Ai-ye!” Scarlet Plume cried. He tried to jump free of her; found himself jerked back by the chain tied to Antheap at the ankles.

  Gerda paused. She stared down at Scarlet Plume’s exposed thighs. A glittering look of animal malice entered her eyes. Suddenly she snatched hold of the head of Scarlet Plume’s dangling copper phallus and sliced it off as neatly as she might the tail from a piece of bratwurst. With a shriek of savage triumph, she held it aloft for all to see. Then she hurled it into the grass below. A thunderous shout from the Bad Talkers rumpled the air.

  Judith retched. She had to catch hold of her horse’s mane to keep from falling.

  General Sibley had difficulty in bringing up the foot soldiers. They were in sympathy with the lynchers. By the time he did get them onto the scene, it was too late, and he had worked himself into such a savage lather that blood could almost be seen boiling in his cheeks. His voice sounded husky, like straw being ruffled, as if his palate had been parched to crusts.

  “Fire!” he managed to get out at last.

  “But, Gen’ral,” Corporal Deloss remonstrated, “we can’t shoot down white women!”

  “White women? White savages, you mean, don’t you? Fire!”

  “But, Gen’ral—”

  “Fix bayonets and charge!” General Sibley husked.

  The blue soldiers moved forward, laggard, slow.

  General Sibley then rushed in alone amongst the New Ulm settlers, cutting the air left and right with his glittering saber. When his saber at last drew white blood, he found voice. “Drive the barbarians back,” he roared. “Even the white she-devils. Gut them if you must.”

  The settlers gave ground slowly. A low, sullen mutter, as of heavy gravel being rattled in gourds, rose from them.

  “Get back, you white-livered cowards! Attacking helpless prisoners of war . . . Why! Get back, or we’ll spill German gizzards all over these river bottoms.”

  At last even the wild, maniacal Gerda let herself be pushed back up the ridge.

  General Sibley surveyed the Bad Talkers from the back of his horse. He still breathed fire. It seemed to emanate from him like whiskey fumes. He pointed to the Union flag at the head of the line. “That is the flag of our country. Your country. Old Glory.”

  The Germans looked at the red, white, and blue with heavy, sulky miens.

  “Well! You have just insulted that flag.”

  Groans rose from the wounded, mutilated Dakotas in the wagons.

  “What do you have to say for yourselves, eh?”

  No one spoke.

  “All right. Lieutenant Raveling, Corporal Deloss, arrest a dozen of these men. Yes, and while you’re at it, take a dozen of these madwomen too. Especially that tall blonde there. We shall take them with us and try them in Mankato. That’s an order.”

  There was a cowed, even sheepish, compliance.

  Judith managed to climb into the last wagon with Scarlet Plume. She supported him. Her eyes were ringed with outrage and red weeping. Her retching had turned into hiccups.

  Scarlet Plume recognized her. He smiled wanly upon her. He apologized for the German attack. “They rage because they wish to appease the manes of their slain children.”

  General Sibley came over on his horse. He looked. He shuddered when he saw what had been done to Scarlet Plume. His dark, sensitive eyes filmed over with shock. He sagged a little in his saddle. At last he husked, “Woman, Mrs. Raveling, please go back with the rest. This is now a matter for men.”

  Ten miles farther downriver, toward evening, a Dakota woman burst out of some brush with much wailing and weeping. She ran straight for where Judith rode drooping on her horse. In one hand the Dakota woman carried a familiar-looking leather-bound book. She latched onto Judith’s leg, imploring her to stop.

  Judith did. The Dakota woman was Pounce’s fat wife, Sunflower. Judith also recognized the book. Sunlight caught the gold lettering across the spine. BIBLE.

  Sunflower spoke in Sioux. “Sunned Hair, I have waited many sleeps to find you. Now at last you have appeared and I return the white man’s wakan message. It is the Good Book from which your sister divined many true things.”

  “Sunflower.”

  “I have kept the Good Book carefully all these—lo!—sad moons.” Large lemon tears ran down Sunflower’s leathery face. “Always it has lain heavy on my heart that the red man might find the Good Book and destroy it and then there would not be its like on earth again. Your sister said there was only one message from the white man’s God. Your sister said it was put by this God between the lids of this book.”

  There was a catch in Judith’s breath. The poor wretch, she thought. Sunflower had misunderstood. Also, she would know nothing of printing and book-manufacture, that there would be more than one copy of the Bible. Judith took the old tome. “Thank you, Sunflower.”

  Judith opened the Good Book. She saw her sister’s graceful handwriting as well as her father’s almost undecipherable script. She let her eyes run along the blurry brown ink marks. They now meant little or nothing to her. Even the time of her own birth date meant nothing. What for? For what? That part of her that loved to indulge in passionate daydreams was now dead. The heart had fallen asleep. The rock had at last been worn too smooth to catch dew.

  Horses on either side of her kept moving downriver. After an exploratory sniff of the ground underfoot, Judith’s horse started up again, joining the stream of the caravan. Slowly Judi
th rode on, leaving Sunflower standing alone beside the trail.

  General Sibley pulled his horse over and asked what went on.

  Judith told him.

  Sunflower’s act moved General Sibley into a more conciliatory mood. He ordered the two dozen Bad Talkers released. On one thing, though, did he remain firm. The Bad Talkers, women as well as men, would have to go back on foot to New Ulm, all the way and without escort.

  The Bad Talkers were still vengeance bent. They were hardly out of earshot when, led by the mad Gerda, they mobbed Sunflower and killed her.

  As Judith jogged on, the thought occurred to her that there in the brain of the dead Sunflower had existed the only other knowledge that Scarlet Plume was guiltless. Sunflower had been there. Too late. Too late.

  Harnesses creaked. Horses neighed. Children whimpered. Mothers murmured.

  “Hup, there, Phenie, Polly! Get along there,” a driver bawled to his horses.

  The caravan made camp at dusk. Candle lanterns winked all around, stars fallen in the autumn grass. Soon too other Sioux across the river shot up fire arrows from the hills. The signals spelled lamentation and sorrow.

  4

  It was the day after Christmas. 1862. It was cold out. Gray.

  At dawn, in the stone prison, the thirty-eight condemned red prisoners began to sing their death song. “Hi-yi-yi! Hi-yi-yi! Hi-yi-yi!”

  An hour later chains were cut from the prisoners’ ankles. A few were allowed to paint their faces. Scarlet Plume put on his usual face marking: a yellow dot inside a blue circle. Then the arms of the prisoners were bound at the wrist.

  Scarlet Plume was not permitted to put on his single scarlet feather. The provost marshal ordered that a rolled-up cap of white muslin was to be placed on each Indian’s head. The caps were to be rolled down over each face just before the execution.

  An Indian named Cut Nose, the fiercest and the ugliest of them all, objected strenuously to the caps. He told Reverend Stephen Riggs, missionary and interpreter, that he considered the forced wearing of the cap the greatest humiliation of all. Whipping a human being, as the whites were accustomed to do, that already was very bad. And hanging—ai-ee!—that was also very bad. But covering the eyes of a brave man so that he could not look upon the peaceful skies just as he was about to die—yun!—that was the bitterest of all and barbar bad.