Darkness at Morning Star

by Joyce C. Ware

  I looked at Bazz in horror. He turned his eyes away, a mute confirmation of the truth of what Quinn was telling me. “Are you telling me these people sacrificed their own children?”

  Quinn shrugged. “Sometimes, but mostly they captured one from some other tribe. From what I heard she’d be placed in the charge of the Wolf Priest and kept in a mud-plastered lodge set apart from the rest of the village and bathed and oiled and fatted up like a suckling pig for a Christmas feast, all the time thinking these sweet rituals was to make her fit to be the bride of a Pawnee chieftain’s son.”

  According to Quinn, as spring warmed the prairie, so did the attentions of the old squaws to the girl. They bathed her hair and skin with special herbs and dressed her in soft, white doeskin decorated with porcupine quillwork.

  “Well, you can imagine how thrilled she musta been! In her own tribe, she’d been just another no-account girl-child; here, those Skidi priests were treating her like a reg’lar princess!” He paused to blow another smoke ring.

  “When do you suppose she suspected they had something other’n a royal wedding in mind? Maybe when the warriors began to build a scaffold. Maybe when they led her from lodge to lodge to beg for wood to fill the pit dug beneath it. For sure the night she was dressed in black, save for a feathered headdress, and led through the village to the scaffold where she was tied, stripped naked of her finery, and left to wait for a dawn she must’ve known was her last.”

  And when the morning star broke over the edge of the world that morning, an iron-tipped arrow was shot into the maiden’s heart, which was cut out of her body and burned to purify the farming implements.

  Quinn grinned after telling us that “As tools, they prob’ly weren’t worth a whole helluva lot, so I guess they figgered they needed all the help they could get. They flung the rest of her, hacked bones and all, into the burning pit to roast some before spreading the whole mess out over the newly planted corn and beans.” He shook his head wonderingly. “Some kind of religion, eh, S’rena?”

  Belle threw down her napkin, screeched back her chair and left without a word. Her silver napkin ring rolled clatteringly across the table. I slowly worked her discarded napkin through it, collecting myself as I did so. I had not come all this way to be routed by a sadistic bully.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked as calmly as I could manage. “What possible purpose—”

  He broke in. “Because although the Skidis mostly lived up north in Nebraska, along the Loup River, a group of ‘em moved down here, hopin’ to escape Comanche raids. They sheltered down near Beacon Rock, and they held their ceremony here, right on the ground this house is built on.”

  “That makes no sense,” I scoffed. “If your father named his ranch Morning Star, he must have known this ground was ... was ...”

  “Soaked in blood? He did. You see. Paw’s parents were killed by Pawnees. Back in the thirties that must’ve been, isn’t that so, Bazz?”

  Bazz shook his head, unable to speak. I suspected he himself had been acquainted with only the bare outline of the hideous story Quinn had recounted with such relish.

  “His folks put him down in their cyclone cellar. Nothin’ near as fancy as the one here, of course. It wasn’t nothin’ but a pit dug in the floor of their sod house and covered with planks. When the Indians came, his paw threw a rag rug across the planks, and he wasn’t found. But he never forgot huddlin’ there in the damp and the dark and hearing what was going on above him. Anyway, buildin’ this house for his bride on Pawnee sacred ground, was his way of thumbing his nose at them. The girls the Pawnee stole was mostly Comanche, like my maw ... like Spotted Fawn.” He paused and frowned. “There’s been a passel of poor girls lost at Morning Star, S’rena.”

  “But the land is still beautiful.. . and the name is, too, in spite of your effort to make it repellent to me.”

  Quinn shrugged. “Don’t matter to me one way or t’other, seein’s how you won’t be here long enough for it to matter to you.”

  He ground his cheroot out on his plate, got up from his chair and bowed to me elaborately. “Tell Belle I sure ‘predated her hospitality. I better go collect Spotted Fawn from the kitchen. She musta had enough to eat by now, and it’s way past her bedtime.”

  Was I meant to infer something from his parting remark? I held my tongue, choosing not to think so. After Quinn left, Bazz pushed back from the table, his excuses meaningless formalities muttered barely loud enough for me to hear. I could hardly blame him. I followed slowly in his swiftly retreating footsteps; then, feeling stifled by the stale, smoke-fogged air, I paused at the front door, opened it, and stepped out on the wide stone doorstep. My breath plumed in the clear, cold air, and above me the moon glittered like a skin of ice pried from a bucket. As I pulled my shawl tight around me, my eye caught movement flickering between the pillars. It was Quinn’s spare figure, silvered by moonlight, striding down the path to his quarters with Spotted Fawn trotting behind him like a cowed spaniel.

  Quinn’s words about collecting Fawn from the kitchen returned to me: was this sadly mistreated child being “fatted up” for a ceremony of his own devising? After soap and water and Belle’s salve had done their work, would she, too, be anointed with fragrant oils and robed in soft white doeskin? Another Comanche girl’s innocence betrayed?

  I turned abruptly. The fringes of my shawl brushed the petals of the peonies, releasing a gagging scent of carrion-like sweetness. The gigantic blossoms, their redness black in the absence of sunlight, lolled like severed heads from stems that despite their stoutness, were no longer able to hold them aloft.

  Severed, heads? I shrank back, repelled by the ghastly image that sprang unbidden to my mind, and yet... Why had nothing short of a team of oxen been able to rid this place of its tenaciously rooted weeds? The garden planted in their stead was nourished by manure. Belle had told me—“Lots of that on a ranch, Reenie”—but no one had fed those weeds.... How far and how deep, I wondered, had the blood of those cruelly sacrificed maidens seeped?

  It hardly bore thinking about. My hand tightened on the door knob, but my gaze strayed back to the peonies in dreadful fascination, as if to a fatal accident. If I snapped off one of these obscene blossoms, would the torn stem’s sap run red?

  I shuddered and turned away. Would I ever again be able to think of Morning Star as beautiful?

  Chapter Five

  I woke very early the next morning, my muscles cramped with cold. I threw back the covers and dashed to the window, intending only to close it before returning to my bed’s downy shelter, but the chill stillness of the great stone house overwhelmed me. Silent as the grave... cold as a tomb.... I hugged myself, shivering, as the morbid phrases trooped unbidden through my mind. Sleep is but a little death....

  A return to bed seemed no longer in the least appealing, and a pale wash of gray on the horizon diluted the nighttime gloom sufficiently to allow me to move with assurance from window to washstand. The water’s icy splash raised goosebumps on my arms, and I hastily crossed to the wardrobe to don my riding clothes, ignoring the rim of dust clinging to the edge of my skirt and the mud smeared across the toes of my boots. My shirtwaist was fresh, but the heavy, oily sweater I pulled on over it hid its cheery gingham checks. My dreary reflection in the mirror mounted above the bureau confirmed my tearful expectation; should I lose my way today on the prairie, I doubted anyone could distinguish me from the dry earth, grasses and limestone outcrops that could become my final resting place.

  That’s quite enough of that, I told myself, my mouth twisting in wry rejection of the dismal scene I had painted. I tiptoed out on the landing. Except for the sighing groan of roof rafters adjusting to the easing of the night’s windless chill, the silence was absolute. I crept down the stairs, willing them not to creak under my booted feet, and into the kitchen, where the pots and dishes from last evening’s supper clustered unwashed on every available horizontal surface not already taken up by Belle’s herbal preparations. Grimacing d
istastefully, I picked up a blackened pot, intending to clean it, but hastily discarded the notion as the pungent odor of the clotted remains of the beans Quinn had so enjoyed rose thickly to clog my nostrils and rile my stomach.

  What a sorry excuse for a household! The big pot of inky coffee standing neglected on a back grate was as cold as the huge black range itself, which would take ages to fire up hot enough for cooking. Actually, I was more relieved than disappointed about the coffee—I had yet to acquire a taste for the acid, oily brew—and just as I despaired of finding anything edible, my eye fell on a basket containing a couple of thick slices of Rita’s cornmeal bread leftover from supper. Left uncovered, the edges had curled and dried. It would be like eating coarse sawdust. But my gently gurgling stomach persuaded me to slide them into one of the sacks Belle used for storing her herbs, to which I added a thick mug from the unmatched assortment wedged higgledy-piggledy on a greasy shelf. Dry bread and water may not have been the menu I would have chosen, but something was better than nothing.

  As I let myself out the kitchen door, a glowing slice of orange inched over the horizon, warming the gray sky to blue. My spirits heightened along with the color; even my breakfast fare seemed less crude. For centuries, peasant folk all over the world had thrived on bread and water; who was I to expect, or deserve, better?

  Bingo whickered softly as I led her out of her stall, one of the few animals allowed valuable barn space. I had Cobby to thank for that, unconvinced as he was of my ability to whistle her up on my own. Being thought incapable, I reflected, sometimes had its uses, a shocking concession that tempted me to throw myself astride Bingo bareback, Indian style, although I knew my seat was still too uncertain for the rough terrain. Caution prevailed, reinforced perhaps by my earlier vision of my dun-colored form sprawled unnoticed among the prairie grasses;

  besides, the saddle horn made a handy hook for my breakfast sack.

  As we made our way out of the sheltering basin in which the ranch buildings clustered, a soft southern breeze lifted the tendrils of hair that had escaped from the single silver braid trailing down my back. The sleepy twitterings of birds waking to the wonder of the morning swelled into a chorus of warbles and trills, causing Bingo’s ears to prick interestedly. Heedless of her bulky presence, wings flashed from bush to bush beneath her very nose, to which the steady little creature’s only response was an occasional “whuff” of astonishment.

  By the time we reached the pond the breeze had freshened, sending ripples chasing across the surface as if unseen fingers were tracing silver patterns on its watery skin. I settled down at the base of a willow springing plume-like out of the uneven bowl in which the pond nestled. Bingo grazed, untethered, no more than an arm’s length away, faithful as any dog. She turned her head to watch my progress with my cup to the pond and back, then, assured of my safe return—or so I imagined—resumed her grazing.

  The cornbread tasted good, the water even better. I sighed contentedly, and began idly to braid Bingo’s long brown-and-white tail. Thanks to Belle, I had a clean place to lay my head and honest food to fill my stomach, and even though our future was uncertain, I trusted we would somehow provide for one another. Loyalty and trust: without it, life was like a world without color; with it, one needed little else—nothing, in fact, and yet...

  What about love? I loved Belle of course, but when it came to the kind of love a woman feels for a man, and he for her ... I shook my head. I had no idea of it; none at all. How could I be disappointed by not having something I couldn’t even define? I shouldn’t be, I told myself, but oh, how I yearned.... “Yes, I do, Bingo,” I whispered. “I do, I do.”

  At the sound of her name, Bingo turned and pushed her soft pink-and-white muzzle against my forehead, knocking my hat off and sending it rolling down toward the pond, where it lodged in a patch of young cattails. She pulled her lips back from her big, yellow teeth as if amused by her prank, then yawned hugely, her jaws twisting in a comical fashion.

  I laughed, and continued braiding her tail. Enjoying the day, my mind wandering, I began to hum; gradually the hum became a long-forgotten song. Hush-you bye, don’t you cry, I began falteringly, tracing slowly back through dimly remembered years, pushing aside the clouding veils, go to sleepy little baby. ... I closed my eyes. Bingo’s coarse tail hairs twisting and twining automatically between my fingers as the words of the song coiled smoothly up out of my memory like pearls on a waxed string. When you wake you shall have all the pretty little horses—blacks and bays, dapples and grays. ...

  Mama’s song. The one lovely memory from that cold, smoky, dark flat wedged into a narrow lot amid the Bowery’s saloons, the drunken shouts of their reeling patrons often drowning out her high, sweet voice. Again, Mama, lull-me-bye again. ... I laid my tear-wet cheek against Bingo’s warm haunch. “All the pretty little horses....”

  Poor Mama. I recalled the day she was taken away, after the coughing that had racked her frail body had stopped. “Good riddance,” I remembered my father muttering as I clung, whimpering, to her waxy arm, wondering why she was so still. Is that what he thought when he left me, pale and sickly in comparison to Belle’s bloom, at the orphanage? I had regained my health by the time Belle joined me there after Papa died, and since we were again identical as two peas in a pod, she delighted in playing jokes based on our identical looks. My meek nature was no match for her daring inventiveness, but I was so glad to have her with me again I never begrudged the laughter that was usually at my expense.

  Bingo’s tail slipped from my fingers, the braid painstakingly accomplished slowly unwinding as I sat back on my heels, remembering. The truth was that no matter how much alike we looked or how giddily she sometimes played, Belle never spoke much about those two years we were apart, but I suspected the poor health that delivered me from the care of a father more often drunk than not had been my good fortune.

  I ate the last of the bread and scattered the crumbs from the sack into the pond where, one by one, they were sucked in by little fish that flashed up in swarms from darker, deeper waters, competing greedily for my unexpected offering. Suddenly I heard a horse snort. I looked up to see Quinn Cooper hunkered down on the ledge above me. The reins of the tall black horse looming behind him trailed loosely down over his shoulder. His intent dark-eyed gaze made my throat constrict with alarm.

  “Makes you feel sort of like God, don’t it?”

  I stared at him uncomprehendingly. “I beg your pardon?”

  He grinned. “Them fish,” he said, waving his hat in their direction. They riffled the surface in panic. The few crumbs remaining on the surface slowly sank, to be snatched by fish more daring than the others. “They’ve prob’ly been swimmin’ around down there hopin’ something tasty’d come their way, and all of a sudden, down it comes, kinda like rain after a rain dance.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” I said, surprised by his fanciful speculation. “It was meant as a treat. But it turned out to be more of a hand-to-hand, or rather fin-to-fin combat.”

  He laughed, and eased his way down the bank to sit beside me. “That’s how life is, S’rena. A body never can tell how a good deed’s gonna be took. One thing for sure, gratitude’s usually in short supply.”

  I smiled in wry agreement. His brown eyes, meeting mine, held a golden flicker in their chocolate depths. Last night that dancing light had seemed more like a spark struck from cold steel.

  “Was that you I heard singin’?”

  I felt the color rise in my cheeks. “It wasn’t meant to be shared.”

  He shoved his hat back off his forehead, tugged at a thick, dark lock and frowned in elaborate puzzlement. “No way I could know that, was there? There we was, just amblin’ along, when we hear this little bird callin’ out for pretty horses, so Bucket pricked up his ears and came right along, never mind about where I might have had in mind to go.”

  “Bucket? Why on earth would anyone give such an unlovely name to a beautiful animal like that!”

&n
bsp; Quinn pulled his hat flat back on his head. “You sure rile easy, S’rena,” he drawled.

  I hadn’t expected an answer, so I figured that was the end of it. I was wrong.

  “I had my reasons,” he continued, “three in fact.” He clamped one pinky finger around the other. “He was the buckingest colt you ever saw ...”

  He transferred the hooked pinky to his ring finger, which sported, I noticed for the first time, an impressive dome of gold. “It was my Paw’s,” he said, seeing my interest. “Called it a token of what’d be mine some day if I kept my wits about me.” He grinned, leaving me no wiser than before—deliberately, I’m sure—and resumed his counting.

  “His hindquarters looked like a bucket of white paint’d been splashed on ‘em...” He paused, snatched at his middle finger, waggled it at me and mouthed the word three.

  I started to tell him I was perfectly able to count, caught myself just in time, and contented myself with the purse-lipped look of reproof I used to earn from Mother Rogg for behavior she considered impertinent. I seldom was; I suspected Quinn Cooper was seldom otherwise.

  “And sometimes,” he continued with a cocky grin, “when you’re in a hurry or a hard place, you want a name that’ll carry a piece.” Without warning, he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Bucket!” he roared. “Bucka-Bucka-Bucket!”

  Startled, the big horse snorted and plunged above us on the ledge, then peered down at Quinn anxiously, ears twitching, long forelegs splayed, his hooves dislodging pellets of earth which released choking puffs of dry dust as they crumbled down upon us. My heart pounded in my chest. Unsure of the horse’s intention, I drew my legs under me, preparing to spring to my feet; Bingo, who had been drowsing nearby, shied away with an indignant snort.

  “Back now, Bucket,” Quinn called mildly. “Back