by Ann Hood
“Uh-oh,” Maisie muttered.
Felix squinted. Here and there he saw large rocks or clumps of sagebrush. Maybe they could dash from one to the other, crouching until it was safe to continue on. But before he could tell Maisie his plan, a hand landed on his shoulder and held on to him hard. Another hand landed on Maisie’s, keeping her in place, too.
Maisie and Felix both turned to find a girl about their age glaring at them. Her dark hair fell to her shoulders in two braids, and she wore a brown dress made of animal hides. Beneath the fringed hem, Maisie glimpsed brown pants, also made of hides. Even when their eyes met, the girl did not let go.
“We…” Felix began, but then he stopped. How could he possibly explain why he and Maisie were standing here?
The girl studied them with great seriousness. After what seemed forever, she released Maisie and lifted her finger to her lips.
“Sshh,” she said softly.
With her other hand, she motioned for them to follow her.
“Is she taking us prisoner?” Maisie managed to ask.
But Felix could only shrug and follow the girl’s moccasins as she lightly skipped across the grass.
After a very long time, a village of tepees appeared on the horizon. The girl had not said a word to Maisie and Felix or slowed down to wait for them when they lagged behind. But as they neared the village, she finally stopped.
“Cheyenne,” the girl said, pointing to the tepees. “My people.”
Felix nodded.
The girl pointed to herself. “Yellow Feather,” she said.
“Felix,” Felix said, tapping his chest.
Yellow Feather laughed. “Fe. Licks,” she repeated.
“Maisie,” Maisie said.
“Maize?” Yellow Feather asked.
“Well, Maisie.”
“Hmph,” Yellow Feather said, and motioned for them to follow.
“Maize is corn,” Felix told Maisie, grinning. “She thinks you’re named after corn for some reason.”
“I know what maize is,” Maisie grumbled.
Now she could see that the tepees were enormous hides wrapped around tall wooden poles, painted brightly with scenes of buffalo hunts or men on horseback fighting with bows and arrows. Smoke rose from the center of the village, and the smell of meat cooking reminded Maisie that she hadn’t eaten since Bitsy Beal’s party the night before.
Yellow Feather pointed again, this time to the men returning with the buffalo. Horses thundered across the plains in the distance.
“No girls allowed to hunt,” Yellow Feather said angrily.
She put her hands on her hips and watched, scowling, as the men grew closer.
“Only men,” she added.
Felix caught up with Maisie and Yellow Feather.
“Will you eat all that buffalo meat?” he asked as he took in the sight of all the dead animals the men were bringing into the village.
Yellow Feather looked at him as if he had just said the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. Once again she motioned for Maisie and Felix to follow her. This time she led them to a tepee where one of the dead buffalo had already been deposited.
She kneeled beside it and gently touched its stomach.
“Pot to cook in,” she said. “Or to carry water.”
Yellow Feather ran her hands along its hair. “Rope,” she said. “And belts. And beneath,” she added, pointing to the ribs, “we make sleds from these.”
Then she touched the strong muscles on its back. She held up an imaginary bow. “Strong,” she said, and Maisie and Felix both nodded, understanding that somehow the muscle could be used to make the string of the bow.
“And this,” Yellow Feather continued, miming sewing.
“Thread,” Felix said.
“Yes,” Yellow Feather said. “Thread.”
She lifted the animal’s leg and pointed to its bone there. Once again she mimed sewing.
“A needle?” Maisie offered.
“Needle,” Yellow Feather said, nodding. “And used as tools. And to paint our clothes and tepees.”
Still on her knees, she moved up to the buffalo’s head. It was hard for Felix to still watch with the buffalo’s tongue jutting out and its eyes glazed and staring back at him. But Yellow Feather grew even more animated, and he forced himself to pay attention to her.
“Very special,” she said solemnly as she poked the purple tongue. “For ceremony.”
Maisie nodded, even though she was only watching out of the corner of her eye.
Now Yellow Feather knocked on the horns. She mimicked eating and drinking.
“Spoons,” Maisie said.
“Cups,” Felix added.
Yellow Feather beamed up at them. She scurried down to the other end of the buffalo. Relieved to not have to look at its face anymore, Felix and Maisie followed her. She lifted something dried on its back legs.
“Make fire,” she said.
Maisie scrunched up her face. “That’s poop,” she whispered to Felix.
“Most important,” Yellow Feather was saying. “Hides. For tepees. For blankets. For clothes. For drums. For food.”
She got to her feet, looking angry again.
“You waste buffalo,” she said, pointing now at Maisie and Felix.
“No, no,” Felix said quickly. “We recycle everything.”
Yellow Feather frowned at him.
“We don’t even hunt buffalo where we come from,” Maisie said.
Yellow Feather considered this.
“You come from Washington, DC?” she asked finally.
“Near there,” Felix said. “No buffalo.”
“I don’t trust white settlers,” she said. “But we always share our food, our tepee.” She seemed to be deciding what she should do.
Felix tried to think of what to say. The truth was, she shouldn’t trust them. He knew the white settlers were going to take her land and kill off the buffalo. But he wanted her to trust him.
“We’re friends,” Maisie said.
Yellow Feather looked hard at Maisie, and then at Felix.
Felix nodded eagerly. “Friends,” he repeated.
“Come to tepee,” she ordered.
They had no choice but to follow her.
“Let’s give her the feather and get out of here,” Maisie whispered.
For once, Felix agreed right away.
CHAPTER 6
Attacked!
“Do not want that,” Yellow Feather said, pushing the feather away.
“But you have to take it,” Felix said, thrusting it toward her again.
Yellow Feather shook her head. “No,” she said.
Felix looked at Maisie helplessly.
“I guess she’s not the right one,” Maisie said.
“But she’s the only person we’ve seen,” Felix said. “Except for all of them.” He pointed his chin toward the hunters.
“Mother,” Yellow Feather said as a woman approached the tepee.
The two spoke in Cheyenne, glancing at Maisie and Felix from time to time. Finally, Yellow Feather said, “You eat. You stay in tepee.”
“Okay,” Maisie said, certain that they were in the wrong place. They needed to leave and find the right person to give the feather to.
Yellow Feather’s mother motioned for them to come with her, and together they walked to the center of the village, where food was being prepared.
A big fire roared and hissed as meat cooked on it. A rawhide blanket laid on the ground had bowls of berries, cherries, and small, wrinkled plums. Families were gathered there. Children ran around, chasing each other. Many of the women had babies asleep in papooses on their backs. The men were unloading the dead buffalo, leaving the women to prepare the meal and take care of the children.
Yellow Feather pointed to the meat.
“Buffalo,” she told Maisie and Felix.
Felix was going to just eat the fruit and berries. But Maisie thought it smelled delicious.
When the men joined
everyone, Yellow Feather’s mother spoke to them. They all listened as she talked, but their eyes stayed on Maisie and Felix. One man stepped forward and studied them carefully. The chief, perhaps. All of the men wore feathers in their hair, but this one had a full headdress of them. He lifted Felix’s chin and looked directly into his eyes, then did the same to Maisie. Felix felt himself trembling beneath the chief’s gaze. Surely he was deciding whether they would live or die, Felix thought.
The chief said something to Maisie and Felix, but they couldn’t understand.
“He will let you eat with us,” Yellow Feather translated.
“Thank you,” they both said.
With that, the silence ended and a celebration began. Plates of buffalo meat were passed around, and everyone took berries and fruit.
“This is good,” Maisie said to Felix, her mouth full.
“No, thank you,” he said, biting into a little plum.
The sun began to set, turning the sky deep orange and red. Yellow Feather invited Maisie and Felix to sit beside her to watch the men give a dance in thanks for the successful hunt.
“They are thanking Wakan Tanka,” Yellow Feather explained. “The Great Mystery. It bring buffalo.”
The men danced around the fire, chanting in unison, their bodies covered in paint and buffalo skins draped over their backs.
A chill settled over the village, but Maisie and Felix became so entranced by the ceremony that they hardly noticed. The men danced well into the night. When they finished, the fire had burned down to just orange embers glowing in the darkness, and above them the sky twinkled with more stars than either Felix or Maisie could remember ever seeing. An animal howled in the distance, but otherwise silence fell over everything.
“Maisie,” Felix whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she said, because she did know he was sorry. But she could not find the words to explain to him how bad she felt, how utterly alone and alienated she was.
Yellow Feather’s voice interrupted.
“Come now,” she said. “Sleep.”
The tepees were arranged in a circle around the fire. Yellow Feather led them to one, lifting the flap for them to enter. It took a few minutes for Maisie’s eyes to get used to the dark, but then she saw that the tepee floor was lined with buffalo hides. Like wall-to-wall carpeting, she thought. Already Yellow Feather’s parents lay under buffalo-skin blankets on the left side of the tepee. Maisie could make out other vague shapes beneath blankets, too.
“Sisters,” Yellow Feather said.
She indicated two other blankets on the empty right side of the tepee.
“Sleep,” she said through a yawn.
“Thank you,” Felix told Yellow Feather.
But she had already slipped away.
He and Maisie burrowed under the blankets. Felix tried to sleep, but he couldn’t get the images of all that he’d seen that day out of his head. The buffalo hunt. Yellow Feather showing them how all the parts of the buffalo were used. The meat roasting on the open fire. The men thanking Wakan Tanka, their chanting and dancing. The silence. The smells of smoke and meat and sweat. He opened his eyes, and through the triangle opening at the top of the tepee he saw the Big Dipper, right overhead. In his mind, Felix imagined the other constellations and where they were in the night sky, until finally, with Maisie breathing deeply beside him, he, too, fell asleep.
“Much work,” Yellow Feather said.
Maisie and Felix struggled awake to find Yellow Feather looming over them, slapping her palms together.
“Buffalo,” she said.
“Now what?” Maisie grumbled as she stepped out into the early morning sun.
Yellow Feather handed them each a long, dry strip of buffalo jerky, then told them to follow her.
“Tastes like Slim Jims,” Maisie told Felix, who was sniffing at it.
“I never liked Slim Jims,” he reminded her. The thought of those slimy, cellophane-wrapped sticks made his stomach lurch.
“But better,” Maisie added.
Felix smiled at his sister gratefully. No one in the world knew him better than she did, and thinking that made his heart tumble. He had been such a jerk to her, he thought, vowing to make it up to her somehow when they got back to Newport.
He stuck the jerky into his yellow tuxedo jacket pocket and was glad he hadn’t tasted it when he saw what lay ahead.
The women of the tribe were all cutting apart the buffalo from yesterday’s hunt. The smell of raw meat was sickening. Felix tried not to notice the flies buzzing around them, or the way the women sliced the red meat into long strips, or the row of buffalo tongues on the ground in front of him.
“Buffalo,” Yellow Feather said with a smile, and she picked up a knife and set to work separating meat from skin.
“I guess we should help?” Maisie said.
“Gee,” Felix said hopefully, “there aren’t any boys here. Maybe this is women’s work.”
“No way are you leaving me here to skin a buffalo,” Maisie told him.
Felix sighed. If he was going to make it up to her, he had to stay.
Reluctantly, he watched as Yellow Feather worked, trying to learn how she was able to cut the meat like that.
By the time mid-morning arrived, both Maisie and Felix were able to cut the buffalo meat into the long strips that would be dried in the sun for jerky. The work had a rhythm to it that made time pass pleasantly. After a while, Maisie and Felix almost forgot the nature of what they were doing and instead lost themselves in the lilting sound of the women’s voices and the way in which everyone worked equally. They felt proud of the meat they cut and happy to be able to contribute to the tribe.
Perhaps that was why they didn’t hear the sounds of horses approaching.
When the soldiers came thundering into the village, everyone was caught by surprise. Six hundred soldiers dressed in blue uniforms attacked the village on horseback.
One minute, Felix was sitting under the warm sun, surrounded by women and buffalo meat. The next, bullets were flying overhead and pandemonium erupted.
Maisie immediately understood.
“They’re attacking us!” she shouted, ducking.
Felix stood up, watching in disbelief as around him, bodies began to fall. He thought of the buffalo hunt yesterday, how the animals had dropped so quickly right in front of him. But these weren’t buffalo. These were the people of the tribe who had taken him and Maisie in.
Maisie yanked him down to the ground.
“Stay down,” she hissed.
She began to crawl on her stomach toward one of the nearby tepees. Unsure what else to do, Felix did the same.
By the time they reached the tepee, the shooting had stopped. In its place came the sounds of moans and screams. Maisie and Felix crawled inside the tepee and closed the flaps tight before breaking into frightened sobs.
“Why would they attack like that?” Maisie finally managed to ask.
But Felix couldn’t answer.
“It was a massacre,” Maisie said. “No one had any weapons to fight back.”
Felix put his arm around his sister. The two of them sat like that, afraid to go out, afraid of what they might see or who might be waiting.
But in no time, the smell of smoke became so strong that Felix had to open the flap and look outside.
The soldiers were still there.
He watched as they rode through the village with torches, setting tepees on fire as they rode past them.
They were heading toward where he and Maisie sat.
Roughly, he grabbed his sister’s arm and pulled her out of the tepee, rolling away from it.
They had hardly escaped before that tepee, too, ignited.
By now, the entire village was ablaze. Maisie and Felix sat helplessly as all around them, everything burned.
Neither of them could say how much time passed before a shadow fell over them. Maisie and Felix sat motionless, huddled together, each lost in their own thoughts about
the horror that had unfolded before them. But both of them wondered if their friend Yellow Feather had been killed. The thought was too awful to say out loud.
They looked up when the shadow appeared. A boy of fourteen or fifteen stood staring down at them. Although his skin was quite light and his hair almost dirty blond, they could tell he was Native American by his sharp features and clothing made from animal hides. He was not very tall, but he was muscular, and his light-brown eyes bore into them as he loomed above them.
It took them a moment before they realized that Yellow Feather stood behind him, her cheeks streaked with tears. She had a gash on her forehead and another at her temple.
“Mad Bear,” Yellow Feather said, as if that explained everything.
“Mad bear?” Felix repeated.
“Soldier,” Yellow Feather said, nodding.
Two more Native American boys joined them. They stared down angrily at Maisie and Felix.
“My village,” one of them said, and he swept his arms wide. “Destroyed.”
“Why?” Maisie cried.
“Revenge,” the light-skinned one said. “Grattan defeated near Fort Laramie last year, and Mad Bear cannot forget.”
He spit in the dirt before continuing.
“Army stupid,” he said. “This camp did not have anything to do with Grattan. Those people long gone. But they kill ninety innocent Lakota today.”
He shook his head.
“To you,” he said, his eyes on Maisie and Felix, “we are all alike.”
“No!” Felix said. “Not at all.”
But the boy was already turning from them.
One of the others spoke to him in quiet tones. Yellow Feather joined in to speak for the twins.
Finally, reluctantly, he turned back to Maisie and Felix.
“Little Thunder and Yellow Feather insist I take you along,” he said, without even a hint of warmth in his voice.
“Thank you,” Felix said quickly.
“I don’t like the white settlers,” he said evenly.
“Uh-huh,” Felix said.
“They don’t understand us,” he said.
Felix tried to think of what to say, but the boy was climbing onto his horse already.