Nakoa's Woman

by Gayle Rogers

  She came at last to the northern shore of the lake. Across from her, on the other side of the water, she could see some women bathing. From that shore she would swim to this one, and Atsitsi would not even know what she was doing, until it was too late for her to be stopped. When the fat old whore waddled back to Nakoa, she would be on the white horse, and Nakoa could be damned, Nitanna could be damned and the whole world could be damned. Maria looked carefully around her, so she would remember where she stood now. Near her a straggly pine had been hit and scarred by lightning, and in the hollow of its burned-out trunk she hid her extra dress. Quickly she returned to the river, filled the buffalo bag, and walked back to the village.

  It was about four hours before dusk. Clouds moved across the sun, but still it was unbearably hot. She wanted to see Anatsa once more, but in the close heat most of the warrior’s horses were picketed outside of their lodges, and Apikunni was probably dozing on his own couch. The thought of going to Anatsa’s when she slept with her husband repelled her, so she headed toward Atsitsi’s. Tonight was to be her wedding night, but no one would watch her take food to Nakoa in a five day ceremony. In his lust, he would not even wait five days for her, in his dirty animal lust that he had to parade before the entire village. Ahead of her, in the inner circle of high chiefs, she imagined she could see the form of the marriage tipi. Did they lie within it yet? Did he lie on top of Nitanna yet? What difference? What difference? the iron heart said, and once more the sickness and the trembling was stopped. She was iron. She was cold strong iron, and she needed no food, no light, no warmth, no man; she would escape from them all. Nakoa could crawl to an empty lodge this night and then he could go back to Nitanna.

  When she reached Atsitsi’s, her face was wrathful.

  “Big Maria’s face like red sun,” Atsitsi said.

  “It is hot.”

  “Heat in big Maria. Sun cool little breeze beside big Maria now. Big Maria burn up all prairie because Nakoa still in bed with Nitanna.”

  “You don’t know a thing about my feelings.”

  “Well, in happy time, we go to lake together now. Little girl has to get clean so can be sweet in her couch tonight.”

  Maria felt a pain in her heart. “Yes. Tonight I am united in holy ceremony that will take place as soon as my husband has the strength to climb off another woman and crawl on me.”

  “Nakoa young. He take care of you fine tonight.”

  They met Sikapischis. She was walking toward them. Some small boys, running and shouting, threw a ball at her feet. When one ran to pick it up, she turned away from them, and her back bent in the agony that shook her body. Maria reached out from her own black world to touch her, but Sikapischis was too far away. The song came to them both, the thought, the words, the melody:

  What alone can I call my own?

  What alone belongs to me?

  What is here I can never lose?

  What is here for me to choose?

  All things go to ashes and dust,

  All things go the way they must,

  What alone is there for me?

  What is mine for eternity?

  Sikapischis turned, and her stricken eyes wandered over the village blindly. She did not see Maria. Atsitsi had walked on, and now Maria passed Sikapischis without a word of good-bye. To her left, from the side of her hurting heart, loomed the marriage tipi, and in the crashing desolation of despair the unfinished verse came to her, and its bitterness was benediction.

  What alone is there for me?

  What is mine for eternity?

  God alone is all I own,

  God alone is all that’s mine.

  What is reaped is always sown,

  I am the cup to bear

  His wine!

  She was going home. She walked after Atsitsi toward the lake and the great mountain that towered over it. Beyond it lay the villages of the Nez Perces. Beyond it lay freedom. God was all she had. God was all she owned. She looked up at the great mountain, and its shimmering grew to shadow the whole prairie. Ana and her father were gone. Her mother had died long ago. Nakoa was dead, but she had her God. She walked toward the mountain, and from its towering heights came a long and ominous pealing of thunder.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  The lake had never looked more beautiful. The sky, although rapidly becoming clouded, was serene. All of the earth around Maria seemed suddenly to have an exquisite loveliness. In her despair a wonder touched her too, as if something, long beckoning, were about to be reached.

  Two women were bathing, and Maria watched them emerge from the water and dress. It was strange. She died and the people who were around her went on. Slowly taking off her clothes, and no longer self conscious of her nudity, she walked into the water. Its cooling touch was another thing of beauty. With swift clean strokes she swam rapidly toward the other shore. As she started walking out of its shallow water she heard Atsitsi howling in a frenzy of cursing. She waved to her in a gesture of farewell, and saw the fat old woman turn and waddle desperately toward the trail that led back to the village. In the shadow of the trees Maria shivered, then walked through the lush ferns toward the straggly pine where she had hidden her clothes. It was farther than she had ever walked naked before in her life. The forest was quiet, and at last she found where she had cached her clothes. She dressed rapidly, and noting the quickly gathering dusk, began again to feel fear. She paused, for a last lingering look at the lake. “Good-bye, Nakoa,” she whispered. A thrush called mournfully out near the still waters, and very clearly, to Maria, its last notes were a farewell to life.

  The sky turned yellow, and the earth below it reflected its eerie light. The earth suddenly seemed strange, expectant, and hostile. Anatsa, leaving her lodge to start the evening cooking fire, stood still at the strangeness and shuddered. It was the same. It was the same light that she had seen smother the earth when she and Apikunni had sought the otsequeeina. It was the same! She began to shake. Death was threatening, close to the village, and she hoped fervently that no women were yet on the trail from the river.

  The fire was burning, and she prepared the meat for cooking. She grew colder in the ghostly twilight. Apikunni slept inside of the lodge, and she knew him to be safe. Apeecheken had not gone to the river; she was with her husband and son. Maria, readying herself for her marriage night, was with Atsitsi. Why then, the fear that death was going to strike and leave her bereft? Why the terrible restlessness, the looking up at the sky and the clouds that were sweeping down from the mountain as if they would destroy more than the light of the moon?

  This was the night for the medicine drum! This was the night for its beating, and the night for outdoor fires to burn until sunrise! Suddenly, something cold slid across her throat, and she strangled in terror. She touched her neck. Maria’s locket was gone; its clasp had broken and it had slid to the ground. She thought immediately of Siyeh, and Kominakus, and how each had had his throat cut. She had felt an omen. A sign had been made in warning, and with trembling hands she desperately sought Maria’s locket. She found it at last, not by sight, but by touch, for its goldness had not shone; even in firelight it seemed to lie in shadow. The locket seemed as cold as the deeply frozen snow. She debated what to do. This was Maria’s marriage night, but even so, the Great Spirit had spoken. She would go to her white friend and tell her that the pulse of her life was threatened with a knife.

  Maria felt growing terror as she neared the burial grounds. The twilight still held, but thickening clouds would hide the moon. As she moved to where Nitanna had said she would leave the horse, the ferns seemed more and more reluctant to part for her. They rustled as she passed, as if scolding her for disturbing their shadowed peace, and Maria thought, “Do not scold; I will soon be gone.” Then she began to see Nitanna before her, as if Nakoa’s wife were actually leading her to the Pikuni dead. Deep in the shadow she saw her fleeting form, but even so far away, she still seemed to see clearly the Indian girl’s cruel mouth.

  At last she
reached the river, the last barrier, and she walked north along its shore, looking for a crossing. The waters were turbulent—almost silver in the dark forest—and rushed beside her noisily. The smell of rain was thickening in the air; there would have been no moonlight for her wedding. She would be glad when the storm came, for it would wash away all sign of her trail by morning.

  She had come to it. She had found a crossing, though Atsitsi had said there was no natural crossing to the burial grounds. Yet here it was; a fallen tree made a perfect crossing; black across the churning waters it was her bridge to her old world. It was even an old and a familiar bridge; she had seen it and crossed it in another life. Behind her lay the smell of food upon the cooking fires, and the talk of other voices, and for a long hard minute she wanted to turn back to them, and flee from the forest that was building more fear in her with each moment that passed.

  She made herself cross the foaming waters, and when she had walked beyond their sound, she heard a faint noise from the trees up ahead. She stopped, her heart pounding, but then she recognized it as siren song, sweetly and tenderly sung. It was a Spanish lullaby, and Maria stretched pleading hands ahead of her, a little girl searching among the wheel bands and white ashes of a burned wagon train. She walked more rapidly, searching each thicket desperately, and the deeper the shadows grew, the clearer her mother’s song became.

  Then suddenly, the sound of the loving lullaby stopped. Maria was stunned by the complete silence. Why would her mother lead her into deepest darkness, and abandon her—alone? Why did she have to be alone, without light? Dear God, she had forgotten about the horse, forgotten to look for the entrance to the Pikuni graveyard! Where was she? How far into the forest, how far away from the trail to the Nez Perces had she wandered? Night had fallen; darkness was complete, and still there was that awful silence and penetrating cold. There was no wind. Did the wind die too in a graveyard? Her hands began to shake; she didn’t know where to go. Desperately she looked closely around her. She could see only a small part of the pines and firs that rose somberly ahead of her.

  Softly, from close to her, came the call of a gambel sparrow. She listened to its three notes. This was the call that she and Anatsa had heard before the thing that had murdered Kominakus threatened them. She saw Kominakus again with his throat slit and the grass bloodied and violently trampled all around him. Dear God! she prayed in panic. How could a night have become so black? She ran until she was exhausted and still she did not see any sign of a white horse. When she stopped, she heard something else stop, and although she knew that her own tortured breathing could be heard in the distance that separated them, she did not hear a sound from where she knew someone to be standing. Her body was covered with sweat, but still the coldness almost numbed her. Had she reviled the old ghost woman Sokskinnie? Had she mocked this restless spirit back behind the river and among the burning fires and the medicine drum? “Words all come back!” Atsitsi had leered. “Words grow—and all come back!”

  Now she moved as silently as she could, and just as silently, footsteps followed her, but in the darkness she could still see no sign of what it was. What kind of an insane thing would murder a little boy?

  When she had laughed at Sokskinnie, hadn’t a wind come from nowhere and furiously shaken the bells of the tipi? “Go and walk in the burial grounds!” Atsitsi had said, and now she was in them. Would the sweet sound of her mother singing a lullaby lead her to death? Would she die rather than be Nakoa’s second wife?

  Sobs constricted her throat. She did not want to die. “Our Father, which art in Heaven,” she whispered, and her body shook so that she had to finish her prayer inwardly. “God,” she pleaded, and hearing nothing behind her now, stopped to listen and convince herself that nothing had really followed her after all. But when she stopped suddenly, there was a soft cessation of sound behind her, and she slipped away from it as rapidly as she could. She wanted Nakoa to save her. She had done them both a terrible wrong, and in her dust and in Atsitsi’s there would be no separation of whore and angel.

  Directly above her she could see the dim outline of the burial platforms. There was no wind, yet the skinning knives hanging from the branches near the dead moved restlessly.

  So, I am in the graveyard of your people, Maria addressed her thoughts to Nakoa. Here I will die, and here I will be buried. In time you will lie here too, and if the winds are kind there might be a touching in death of what couldn’t meet in life.

  The footsteps pressed closer. The time had come for her murder. Why the delay? You do not follow me so quietly to leave me untouched? Tears began to course down her cheeks. It was a wicked and a terrible thing to give Nakoa her corpse upon their wedding night.

  Maria faced the shadows behind her. There was no sound from them, not the slightest rustling among the fallen leaves. Why did death wait?

  Everything around her remained still. Then, God, I am to live! Maria clasped her hands in prayer. She was weak with gratitude. Breathing deeply in relief, she turned to leave the burial grounds. A motionless figure crouched before her. She was looking into the face of a dead woman. Little wisps of gray hair curled all around the unseeing eyes, and from the open mouth came a long train of crawling ants. Maria screamed in horror, and as panic seized her she screamed again and again, running blindly back toward the river. “Nakoa! Nakoa!” she called wildly.

  Sokskinnie would follow her and slit her throat as she had done to Kominakus and Siyeh! Her God had not saved her; a corpse would sever her head from her body. Running now completely by instinct, she plunged into a thicket of balsam and scratched her face and hands. Smarting with pain she ran hysterically on. A crashing came down from the skies, and for one moment the full moon broke through the clouds. Gleaming palely before her, she saw the form of a white horse. He was picketed to a clump of small firs and was prancing nervously upon fine slender legs. Sobbing with relief, Maria ran to him. Upon him were provisions, a robe, a knife and food, all of the things Nitanna said would be there. She would ride him back to the village; nothing could catch her now! She mounted the horse easily, but two hands seized her and dragged her back to the ground. The white horse wheeled, shied, and fled in terror.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Nakoa had been summoned that night before a council of the high chiefs. He knew why he had been summoned, and he reached the council lodge early, when thunder was first rolling out across the prairie. His father was already seated in his customary place, and for a while they were in the lodge alone, but neither spoke to the other. In the pit a fire burned with great light, and Nakoa could see his father’s face, and for the first time his father seemed old.

  Others entered quietly and were seated. Nakoa stood and looked down upon faces beloved to him since childhood, his father beloved to him, Onesta beloved to him, Itamipai, high chief of the Emitaks, beloved to him. Ninaistako who had taught him to hunt the redtailed deer entered, and as high chief of the Is’sue, sat near Natosin; Maka, Short Man, and high chief of the Raven Bearers, entered and was seated on the other side of Nakoa’s father.

  No one spoke, and the medicine pipe lay untouched. Nakoa stood before them all and waited for the three high chiefs of the younger societies. They came together: Kinaksapop, Little Plume; Imitaikoan, Little Dog; and Sistsauna, Bird Rattle. Only one of these men that headed the societies that led to the powerful Mutsik was younger than Nakoa. The chiefs of the Little Birds, Pigeons, and Mosquitoes looked at Nakoa strangely, and their faces said they could not believe why Nakoa stood before them. To trade any woman for the leadership of the Mutsik—to trade a white woman above all for this—was a sickness, yet it did not show upon the calm and unruffled features of Natosin’s son.

  Natosin began to speak.

  “Tonight I am old, and my age rests upon me heavily. The winter of my life numbs my bones, and my flesh aches with their stillness. I could be a young and vigorous man again, and this same path would be walked, and this same end met. My heart is heavy with the words I wi
ll say, but before the Sun, I will say the words that are in my heart. I will speak the truth as it appears to my eyes.

  “My son who stands before us now is high chief of the Mutsik. It is known by us all that he earned this chieftainship with his many coups, and with his acts and deeds of warmth toward his people. In this lodge, and many, many times, his voice has been raised strong in wisdom.”

  “Yes,” said old Itamipai, chief of the old men’s society. “Your son has long shown the wisdom of his father, and the story of his coups covers most of the skins of this lodge. He has never been selfish with the fruit of his bravery, whether it was meat from the hunt, or what he has gained in coups.”

  “This is true,” said Onesta, and the rest of the chiefs murmured in assent.

  “Now it is,” Natosin went on, “that my son will marry a white woman tonight, without even five nights spent with his first wife, Nitanna. Is this not true, my son?” he asked Nakoa.

  “It is true,” Nakoa answered. “The white woman will sleep in my lodge tonight. She will be taken as my second wife.”

  “She will be your wife,” Natosin said softly, “even when there is no sweetness in love unreturned, and she herself does not want this marriage.”

  “She will be my wife,” Nakoa said, his voice tightening.

  “And so it will be,” Natosin said. “In this marriage, there is no wisdom, but so it will be.”

  “And why is there no wisdom in this marriage?” Nakoa asked his father angrily.

  “The anger in your voice says that you already know this, my son.”