Red Shirt set a respectable pace for their journey. They could have moved faster, but the white man was old and on foot. If he didn’t like him, he would have traveled faster to get to his home and not cared whether the man could keep up with them or became lost again. But, this man had done him no wrong and seemed to be on good terms with his new wife. He also helped subdue and punish the bad man, not arguing whether it was wrong or cruel to do so. Yes, Dances Naked was smart and obedient. If he weren’t so old, he’d make a good brave, regardless of whether he was red or white.
Marty could tell they were getting close to their destination. The men’s postures were changing, their backs now straight and vigilant. Their eyes darted quickly, surveying the surrounding brush and trees as if they were on the lookout for someone watching them. They were on sentry alert. Something was wrong here though. Shoot, he’d be happier than Christmas morning to be back to his home. These men didn’t seem to be sure of what they were riding into.
As it turned out, no one greeted the group. Red Shirt dismounted and signaled to the rest of his band to stay mounted—they might have to leave soon.
A bent over old woman with a tall walking stick, and even taller attitude, came out from a cobbled together hovel of brush and hides, commanding everyone’s respect with her deportment. Red Shirt listened to her questions but didn’t reply with words, only grunted. Marty knew that sound: he was pretty good at picking up on his new companion’s guttural emanations. “I’ll handle these people—don’t worry about them,” he seemed to say without using his words, English or Cherokee.
However, Old Woman didn’t believe him; or maybe she just didn’t trust him to be capable. Either way, her determined scowl and labored walk over to the new people in the village was an insult to Red Shirt. Marty saw the way his offended companion sucked in his breath, deciding it was better to keep quiet than create a row. He pulled back his shoulders and waited for Old Woman to verify what he had just told her was true: these white people were harmless.
Old Woman came to within six feet of Marty and stopped. She pointed at him with her carved walking stick, saying words he didn’t understand. Her body language wasn’t readable. All he could tell was that she was ticked off. She walked a few feet closer then prodded his belly with the earthen end of her cane. He still didn’t understand her words except that they were the same ones repeated over and over again. Her actions weren’t any clearer either. She nudged him again, this time harder and more insistent, with the same gruff, unintelligible command. Marty looked over to Red Shirt for guidance and saw him subtly touch his own shirt: ‘pull up your shirt.’
“Yes, ma’am,” Marty said politely and pulled up his long, blue shirt, completely exposing his breechclout and belly. He looked around and saw that several other old women had come out from behind the makeshift shelter and were now watching the physical examination. He looked down at his torso again and realized why she was so concerned. “No, ma’am; I don’t have the measles. See,” he said as he pulled his shirt off over his head then raised his arms so she could see his armpits, turning to show his back, “no redness and, if you care to touch me, you’ll see I have no fever. She and the baby are fine, too,” he said as he pointed to Rachel. “No sickness,” he mimed fatigue and put the back of his hand up to his forehead as if to check for fever. “None,” he said and shook his head.
Marty perked back up to his healthy, white man persona, “We’re all good,” he said with a smile and started to put his shirt back on.
“Blah, blah, blah, blah-blah,” said Old Woman as she walked toward Rachel’s horse, doggedly stabbing the ground with her walking stick with each step. She was not a happy person and not satisfied with Red Shirt’s explanation.
Red Shirt took long, broad steps, almost ran, to his new family. Marty could see the reserve he was using. If he ran, it could be seen as a sign of weakness. He stood by Rachel’s side, resolute, his arms crossed in front of his chest, preventing Old Woman from starting her examination. Marty didn’t know the words he used but the meaning was clear to him and to Rachel: ‘This is my woman and I will take care of her. Do not touch her—she’s clean.’ Red Shirt dismissed the crone with a nod then took the reins from Rachel and headed away from the belligerent old woman and her coterie.
“Good day, ma’am,” Marty said to the matriarch then made a hop, step, long stride movement, not quite a run, to catch up with Red Shirt, Rachel, and the baby. He didn’t know where they were going, but he definitely felt more comfortable with his new clan than the one, wary old biddy, and her big stick.
Evidently, their group had passed the medical examination. Number Two and The Young One, who hadn’t been interrogated or examined, followed behind them to the separate little encampment a few hundred yards beyond the first site. A young girl, Marty figured she was six or seven, was toting a crying baby. Actually, the lass was crying just as much if not more than the baby. Number Two jumped off his horse when he saw her and grabbed and held both of them to his chest. He listened to her words then he, too, was wailing.
“Rachel,” Marty called as he walked up to her, still mounted on the mare. “Give Junior to Red Shirt or me, then go see if you can take care of that little baby. I think Number Two’s wife died and those are his children. I don’t see anyone around here other than you who looks like she’s equipped to see to the wee’un’s needs.”
“Huh?” Rachel asked as she handed Junior to Marty in an act of faith and family.
“Go nurse the babe, will you?” he said plainly, canting his head to the wailing trio then helping her down.
Rachel walked up cautiously to the distressed family. She wasn’t sure how to communicate her desire to help them then realized she’d just show them what she was offering. She untied her blouse and bared her breast, putting out both arms to the father who was now holding his baby. ‘Let me help,’ she said without words.
Number Two had seen this woman feed her son. He knew she had milk. Yes, she was now his brother-in-law’s wife but she was still a white woman. If she gave her milk to his son, he’d be part white man, too. He looked down and saw his son, still crying but without as much energy as a young one should when distressed. Yes, he’d rather have his son part white than dead. He lifted his head and ceded his son to her, ‘Here, please help; I appreciate it,’ was his heartfelt, unspoken message.
Little One rubbed his nose back and forth on the nipple. It wasn’t the same smell as his mother but it was milk and not the coarse mixture that Big Sister had been urging him to eat. He nursed heartily, letting the new mother pull him away after a few minutes to rub his back. He gave her a long, loud burp then nuzzled his head back down toward her breast—he wasn’t finished yet.
Red Shirt stood away from the group, assessing the situation without interfering. Marty walked over to him and spoke softly, “Looks like the measles got to your tribe here. Is that what happened to your other family?” he asked.
Red Shirt cut his eyes to him and shut them slowly in a tacit, affirmative answer, then opened them back up and watched Rachel feed his nephew. Now his sister was dead, too. He had always loved his sister, she was his twin, and he wanted to cry and wail as his brother-in-law had, but he needed to be strong. He thought that the red belly disease was gone but it had come back. His father had over fifty braves in this tribe two years ago. Now he was dead and there were only three braves left including him. They hadn’t been successful in the hunt and winter was coming. He still had to see to the needs of the old ones and the children first. He snorted in disgust. There weren’t many that he had to feed, but he still had nothing. He looked over at Marty. And now he had the white man to feed, too.
Marty had seen the look that Red Shirt gave him. To him he was just another mouth to feed. And, by the looks of everyone’s leanness, there wasn’t much food to share. There had to be a way that he could help these people.
“If there’s a town nearby, I have some money. Maybe I could buy some bacon or cornmeal or well, whatev
er I have is yours. You helped me and I’d like to return the favor. But, I think that I should be the one to do the purchasing. That is, I should be the one to go to the store. I don’t think the white man, the other white men, would be fair to an Indian with the value of the money. That and they probably wouldn’t believe that I just ‘gave’ you money. Some of those white folks are pretty nasty. But you know that already, don’t you?”
Red Shirt snorted in agreement. He didn’t understand everything Dances Naked had said, but he was pretty sure that he was offering to buy food for his people and to beware of white men. All he needed was to be shown the way to a store or trading post.
“Sound like a plan?” Marty asked. He saw the confused, uncertain look on Red Shirt’s face then realized he was using 21 century jargon. Think 18 century, Melbourne! “Take me to the white man’s town and I’ll buy food and give it to you.”
Red Shirt lifted his head; he understood. He looked hard at Marty; he knew that there must be more. Dances Naked wanted something for this.
“Yes, I want something,” Marty answered the unspoken question. “When we come back with the food and after you make sure that your clan or family or tribe or…sorry; I’m babbling.” Marty straightened his back and started again, employing more hand language. He shifted Junior to his hip and opened his one available arm toward Red Shirt then brought it back to himself. “I want to help you and would like for you to help me. I’ll buy food for your family, but I want you to help me get back to mine.” Marty ended his statement of terms with the single-handed air drawing of a curvy woman, bringing his cupped hand to his heart to make sure he knew he was speaking of his woman. He looked down at Junior once again, this time seeing in him his missing son, his eyes leaking tears as he recalled his dilemma. Red Shirt was back with his family—he wanted his, too.
Red Shirt looked back to Rachel and his nephew. His arms suddenly felt so empty. He grunted and Marty knew why: give him his son. “Here’s your boy,” he said. “So, do we wait for tomorrow? I mean,” Marty tipped his head sideways and shut his eyes like he was sleeping then opened them again, “do we go in the morning after we’ve had a good night’s sleep?” he asked hopefully.
Red Shirt gave a heartfelt chuckle and smiled as he nodded. ‘Yes, they’d leave in the morning.’ This white man was funny and generous. He must be part Indian. Or crazy.
The young girl, Marty called her Big Sister, made a cornmeal gruel and set it out for everyone to share, making sure that the men had as much as they wanted before she came back for the bowl. Red Shirt had kept hold of Junior and used his finger to bring the viscous blend to the lad’s mouth. Evidently, the food agreed with him because he kept hold of the digit and gnawed on it afterwards, trying to get the last bit of corn off it. Either that or the boy was teething. He seemed to be that age, Marty recalled.
Red Shirt offered the dinner in a dish to his niece. She brought the half-empty bowl over to Rachel and the two of them used their fingers to lick the bowl clean. Marty had wanted more and he knew that the other men did, too. They were all hungry, but they had eaten fish the night before. The little girl probably hadn’t had much to eat and Rachel was nursing two babies. She deserved a larger share, too.
Rachel was enchanted with the young girl. Marty could see the tenderness in her eyes as she watched the girl bring more wood to the fireside. He theorized that if she and Grant were their only family, she had probably never had a little sister. That and she had a son; she probably wanted a daughter, too. Well, after the way she and Red Shirt had been going at it nearly all night the night before, she’d be with child soon. Hmph! No wonder Red Shirt didn’t want to leave to guide him to The Trees: he was still a newlywed. Their accommodations for a honeymoon didn’t seem to bother them last night. Tonight looked like they’d have a bit more privacy, but he might have to share her attentions. She had a new mouth to feed.
Yes, it looked like the little brave would live now. He hadn’t seen any milk goats or cows around, and infants didn’t do well on corn gruel. As strange as the last 36 hours had been, it looked like this eclectic collection of people was meant to be in each other’s lives. God knew what he was doing. They were all fulfilling each other’s needs.
11 The Shopping Trip
August 22, 1781
arty made himself useful after dinner and helped Big Sister gather wood. He felt like the odd man out in this tribe. Shoot, he was the odd man! No home, no designated job or tasks, no family, he didn’t speak their language, wasn’t used to their pasty food… but he did have something in common with them: his butt flap. Red Shirt was still wearing the pants they had traded for. Marty noticed him a few times discretely grabbing his crotch to rearrange his man parts. Well, he’d wait until it was just the two of them and tell the red man that he’d be a lot more comfortable if he tucked in his shirt and used the softer cotton cloth as a barrier to the rough denim. Marty wiggled as he thought about it. The soft leather breechclout really was comfortable and non-restrictive. ‘Hmm,’ he wondered, ‘I wonder if I could get away with wearing this when I go back home? Nah, at least not in public. However, he realized as he thought about it more, Bibb might find an Indian buck running around in nothing but a thong and a panel of tanned deer hide, quite provocative. “Stop it,” he told himself aloud. “No fantasizing until bedtime.”
Big Sister looked over at the crazy white man to see if something was wrong. Her uncle had told her not to fear him, but to make sure he didn’t do anything to hurt himself: he would be useful to the tribe. She trusted her uncle, but this animal with two legs didn’t look like any man she had ever seen. The top half looked almost like a white man, bearded and with curly hair, but most white men wore a hat: he was bare headed like an Indian. The middle part looked Indian, too. She was pretty sure that Dances Naked was wearing Red Shirt’s breechclout, but she could be wrong—she never looked that closely at a man’s clothing. And then, there was the bottom part: bony white legs with footwear that looked different from any she had seen. Those weren’t moccasins nor were they the black shoes with buckles like the soldiers and other white men wore. These were very strange and both of them had something on the inside seam. It looked like centipedes were crawling up over his ankles, but the insects weren’t moving. She’d keep an eye on them, just in case. Centipede bites hurt real bad and almost killed her best friend last year. She sighed in recall. Running Deer had survived the high fever, redness and swelling from the insect bite, but couldn’t survive the high fever and red spots from the white man’s disease, measles. She sure missed her—her and everyone else who had died.
Marty looked up from his fuel finding foray and saw stars. That was good news and bad news. The good news was it probably wouldn’t rain tonight. The bad news is it would be getting cold, very cold. He looked around and saw Big Sister had spread out a deer hide on the ground and was rolling out her blanket on top of it. He watched as she set up another bed next to it. Probably for her father, he surmised. Then he realized what was so strange: except for the little hovel of a tent slash lean-to that the old women were housed in, there were no structures in this village. Then he remembered: measles. Whenever the measles struck an Indian village, the surviving members torched the homes and settled into a new site, leaving anything that had touched the ‘bad medicine’ burned to the ground along with their abodes. “Smart,” he said softly, “gets rid of the germs even if it is a bit extreme.”
Big Sister heard him speak in the strange tongue of the white man. Her uncle knew many words and had taught her a few of them—‘hello,’ ‘please,’ and ‘thank you’—and had promised to teach her a few more. He told her she would get more respect from the white man if she knew some of their language. If she didn’t know any words, they would take advantage of her. But, he wouldn’t teach her very many words. It was best for her to know just a few, he said, and let him deal with the white man.
Red Shirt walked up to Marty with a bundle under his arm. He looked Marty in the eye and returned hi
s blanket roll to him, no words crossing his lips but his demeanor saying, ‘Here, I think this is yours.’
“Why, thank you,” Marty said politely. He was just deciding on whether to ask Red Shirt where he should bunk, or should he wait to be shown his spot, when the apparent chief dipped his head in farewell, a smirk growing on his face as he turned away to his own designated area. He was going to sleep with his wife again tonight. Marty watched as the hint of a smile blossomed into a full-blown grin of lust. No, he wouldn’t break his friend’s concentration; he’d just find his own empty space to drop his blanket then throw himself down on top of it. All of the sudden, the hard earth and lying horizontal sounded obscenely enticing. He had walked and trotted beside the horses all day. He was sixty-seven, no, sixty-eight years old. “I’m getting too old for this shit,” he groaned as he picked up another armload of tree pieces to add to the woodpile.
Big Sister scurried over to his side and waited patiently for him to acknowledge her presence. “Please,” the young girl said, and then pointed to an area on the opposite side of the fire from her. She had swept away the dropped twigs and kicked the larger stones from the new bedroom site for her tribe’s guest, the man who was of use to them, the man who didn’t know how to dress, the man her uncle called Dances Naked.
“Why, thank you very much,” Marty replied and gave the lass a quick bow. “I appreciate the hospitality, miss. If there’s anything I can assist you with, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
Big Sister’s eyes widened on hearing so many words come out at one time. He talked more than Old Woman did! She didn’t know what to do or say so nodded and said, “Thank you.” She had already said ‘please’ and they were already in each other’s presence so ‘hello’ wouldn’t be appropriate so ‘thank you’ must be the right words.
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