by Karen Kay
“They are fine.”
“But what are they doing over there, on the opposite shore? And why aren’t they crossing the river?”
“They are not all coming.”
“What? Not coming?”
“The Englishman refuses to travel any further.” White Eagle smiled slightly. “He said something about the expense of his suits and his silks and not liking all this adventure. They are turning back.”
“I see. I’m not surprised.” She paused, a thought occurring to her. “Did the marquess mention how he intended to pay for his stay upon returning to Fort Union?”
White Eagle shrugged.
“And what about Rebecca? Why is she still over there? When will you and the other guides be bringing her across the river?”
White Eagle looked off in the distance, avoiding Katrina’s eyes. He said, “Your friend will be going back to the fort, too.”
“No!” Katrina responded at once. “You can’t, she can’t. She has no one to watch over her and protect her there. Either I must go with her or she must be brought to me.”
“Night Thunder has promised to keep her safe.”
“Night Thunder? But he—”
“He will guard her and see to her needs.”
“But—”
“Someone must go with the Englishmen and guide them back to the fort. They are as helpless as newborn babes.”
“But what has that to do with Rebecca? She must stay with me. I would worry about her otherwise, and—”
“Have you not noticed the looks shared between my friend and yours? It is better they stay together. Do not worry. Night Thunder will be with her. This I can promise you.”
“Do you? I still don’t like this, and what do you mean by the looks shared between them? I—”
“It has been decided.”
“Well, you can un-decide it.”
White Eagle, his lips turning up into a grin, seemed to be amused by Katrina’s determination. “Do you worry about a chaperon? Is that what bothers you? Do not. Good Dancer and his wife will join us as soon as the others have started back to the fort.” White Eagle crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you think I would take you on this long trip without another female companion? And with us as yet unmarried?”
“As yet?”
“Humph,” was all the answer she received from this man.
“Perhaps it is for the best.” Katrina looked away from White Eagle, glancing out across the river. “This trail could well prove dangerous, and I wouldn’t want Rebecca risking her life unnecessarily. So mayhap you are correct in your judgment.”
“Humph,” he uttered again, and though she was fast beginning to tire of this standard response from him, she said nothing about it, gazing instead toward Rebecca and calling out, “I will miss you.”
Katrina waved, and Rebecca returned the gesture.
“I will miss you too,” Rebecca cried back. “If I could, I would be with you.”
Katrina smiled and mouthed the words, “I know,” and, turning about, she began to follow White Eagle up the steep incline, to the bluff just above the river.
They were dodging stickers and thorny plants when she heard White Eagle say, in a rather offhand manner, “Did I mention to you that your Englishman agreed, giving me his word of honor, to end your engagement and promised not to cause you any further trouble over this?”
Katrina could barely believe that she was hearing correctly. She opened her mouth to say “No, you did not,” but nothing issued forth. And so she did the only thing afforded her in her situation.
She stared at his back as he moved ahead of her, simply stared.
Chapter Fourteen
Night had descended upon the prairie. In the distance an owl hooted and a nighthawk squawked, while the prairie wolves howled out a chorus. The smoky scent of the fire and the fresh aroma of a balmy night clung to the air; the creek gurgled, the wind whistled through the cottonwoods, while the hobbled horses stomped the ground.
The whole effect was invigorating.
“Where are Good Dancer and his wife?” Katrina asked White Eagle, who sat no more than a few scant inches away from her.
He gave her a disbelieving look. “They have gone off to be alone.”
“Maybe I did not tell you that they have recently been married.”
“Oh,” she said again, not needing to be told more. She more than understood why the two of them might want to be alone, and somehow reference to the couple and what they were most likely doing made her feel more…giddy in White Eagle’s presence.
“Will they be away most of the night?”
He answered her with a mere look.
“I see.”
Suddenly images replayed themselves in her mind, reminding her that this was the same man who had held her in his arms not so many nights ago, the same man who had made her feel…so good…
“Do you worry about being alone with me?”
“No,” she lied.
“You should.”
“Should I?”
“Aa, yes, it is so.”
“Why?”
“Because I am a man and you are…” He sighed. “Perhaps we should speak of something else. Many of my people, when alone on a night such as this, tell stories. It is always welcome entertainment, and a good storyteller is a wealthy man in our camp.”
Katrina just smiled at him for answer as she glanced up at the stars which had begun to rise, catching her attention.
White Eagle’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Do you know of any good stories?”
“Many,” she said. “Do you?”
“Aa, yes, I do. Would you like to tell me some of yours, and then, if you wish, I will tell you the tales that I like best?”
She glanced up at him, a mistake; he looked altogether too handsome, too masculine, too…desirable. His hair remained loosened, strands of it blowing in his face with the breeze; the single feather hung down one of his sidelocks, and the ever-present long shell ornaments fell down each side of his face. His war shield lay off to the side of him, his quiver full of arrows and his bow placed on top of it, within easy reach.
His chest remained bare and bronzed, all muscle and sinew, and, after the recent adventure in the water, his leggings looked pliable, as though they had shrunk to him, accentuating all the more his masculine beauty.
And now, since the marquess had agreed to end their engagement, she was free to…
She gasped. Just what was she thinking? “Yes, I think telling stories will be just fine,” she said, a little too quickly, her voice highly pitched. She let out a self-conscious laugh. “But first I’d like to ask how you managed to get the marquess to agree with you to end our betrothal.”
“Did I not mention that part of it to you?”
“No, you did not.”
White Eagle shrugged. “My friends and I gave him a choice. Either he could agree to end your engagement without any further trouble or, like a lost puppy, he could find his own way back to the fort.”
“You didn’t.” She gasped, and then smiled.
“Didn’t I just say that we did? After our talk, like the timid rabbit, the Englishman seemed to be reasonable.”
“He would be that way now,” she said. “But when he gets back to civilization, away from here, who knows what he will do?”
“It is as we thought, too. It is why we gave him the hair of a pony and a puppy, made into a necklace.”
“You gave him what?”
“It is a charm. It will give him no trouble as long as he is truthful, but let him lie about you…”
Katrina smiled. “And it will work?”
“Just let him try once to lie…he will see.”
“Where did you get such a thing?”
“Night Thunder is a medicine man. We made it after we had rescued the ponies.”
“I see. Well,” she said, deciding to change the subject, “perhaps we should tell stories after all. Give me a moment while I try to remember a
ll my childhood fairy tales.”
“Fairy tales?”
“Yes,” she said. “Stories.” She hesitated before she cleared her throat. “Here is a tale that is my favorite. It is a story written long ago by Giambattista Basile, in a work called Lo cunto de li cunti, and it is about a young girl who lived in a land far away. Though this girl had once been the daughter of a rich merchant, he had died, leaving her in the care of her stepmother. Now, this stepmother had two other daughters who were extremely jealous of this girl, because of her beauty, and so the stepmother made the girl work from morning till dusk, dressing her in rags. It so happened that the king—the chief’s son—was to give a ball, or a dance and…”
She told the story slowly, until at last she had said it all.
White Eagle listened carefully to the very end of the story and then, sitting back, he asked, “Why did the young girl stay with her stepmother after she learned that her guardian was so cruel?”
“She had to.”
“Did she have no other relatives who would take her in and care for her, no sisters or brothers of her mother or father…no cousins?”
“No.”
“Why did she not find someone else to stay with whom she favored?”
“Because,” said Katrina, “in English society, even in American society, this is not done, very few people take in orphans…”
“They do not?”
She shook her head. “Besides, the stepmother wanted the estate and the money that would come to this young girl, and so she had to ensure that this girl stayed with her.”
“It is a funny way to act when one is wanting to obtain something from another.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I know what this money is, but what is this estate?”
Katrina sighed. “An estate is a section of land that is owned by a particular person or family.”
“By one person or family only?”
“Yes.”
“And this person does not share his wealth with others in his nation?”
“No, he does not.”
“Humph!” he said. “In my tribe, such is the sign of a very inferior person. Never would a stingy man such as this rise to great heights. To lead, to be a chief, one must ever consider the rights and dignity of others, and one must have compassion for all who are under his care. One must also put the good of the tribe before his own needs. Such is a great man, or woman. They are few, but we all strive to attain these qualities.”
She thought for a moment, a puzzled look coming over her face. “Then the Blackfeet have no territory they call their own?”
He threw out his chin, his countenance a study in stubborn pride. He said, “All tribes must own and control a portion of land or they would soon be thought little more than women and would have no food with which to feed their hungry.
But the land, like the air, is free to all within the tribe, or others who are friendly toward us. It is only our enemies—those who would steal our land and try to keep us hungry—that we fight.”
“I see. Then your concept of ownership of land greatly differs from that of English society.” She paused, and looked up at him cautiously. “Perhaps, White Eagle, you should tell me your story now.”
He grinned. “Do you truly wish this, or do you want me to stop asking questions?”
She smiled back at him. “I honestly wish to hear your story.”
“Very well.” He leaned forward, toward her, over his crossed legs. And he began, “Here is a tale that I have always enjoyed. Once, long ago, before the white man came to our country and before the coming of the horse, there was a young boy who loved a very beautiful maiden. She loved him, too, but their way was not to be an easy one, for the boy was from a poor family and unable to pay the bride-price.”
“The bride-price?”
“Aa, yes, things a man must give a woman’s relatives for the honor of marrying her.”
“Are you telling me that an Indian buys a wife, like a…a knife…or some trading goods, that he then owns?”
White Eagle chuckled. “Does any man ever own a woman?”
She bristled. “White Eagle, you did not answer my question.”
“Did I not? Let me try to remember. Oh, yes, buy a bride? What is your price?”
“White Eagle!”
He smiled. “Why do you ask such a question? Does the white man buy his bride?”
“Of course not, but you just said, that…that…”
“A man must prove he is worthy of a woman.” White Eagle straightened a bit, his shoulders going back, and he continued, “Parents will be entrusting the life of their daughter and, perhaps, later on, theirs, to this man they let marry their daughter. She will be dependent upon him for her subsistence as well as for her standing within the tribe. Is it not right that the parents should demand from a man that he prove himself worthy of her?”
“Perhaps,” she said, “but the bride-price, what is that?”
“Do you mean what does a man actually give them?”
Katrina nodded.
White Eagle said, “A man must count many coups to prove that he is an able provider, he must also pay the price of many horses he has captured from an enemy. These and sometimes other things are the bride-price.”
“Then a man does buy himself a bride.”
“Never,” said White Eagle. “A man proves himself deserving of her. Whether she or her parents accept his suit is up to them. How is it done in your village?”
Katrina paused for a moment before she spoke, then carefully, she said, “Sometimes parents arrange a marriage between two people.”
“Yes, this is often done in my village too.”
“But there is one thing that is quite different from yours.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“In my society it is the woman who often brings with her…riches to a man…it is considered part of her…allure…her dowry.”
“Saa, no, the woman buys herself a man?”
“No, she…well, perhaps, I suppose if one were to think about it that way, it could be said that she does.”
“Does the man ever have to prove to her and to her parents that he is worthy of her?”
“Not always. Sometimes a woman is lucky to be married at all.”
“What?”
“Not all women in my society are married. Do you not have unmarried women in your tribe?”
“Only a few, but those are all widows who have decided not to marry again. It is a way to show great respect for one’s late husband, but that is all. All other women are married.”
Katrina frowned, drawing back, away from him. “But then, you are allowed more than one wife.”
“Aa, it is so.”
She didn’t say another word, just looked at him.
He murmured, his voice low, “Would you like me to continue the story?”
She nodded and looked away.
“As time went on, this young man asked for the hand of the girl that he loved, but her parents refused, for he was poor and could give them nothing for her. And he had not yet counted any great coup to make himself favorable to them. The future looked bleak.”
“Will you?” she asked after some moments.
“Will I what?”
“Will you take more than one wife?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Why do you ask? Are you interested in becoming…my wife? If so, I could tell you how to become—”
“No,” she said at once, her voice too husky, too high. “I just wanted to know, that is all. It is only a question.”
“Humph.”
“Is that all you can say, humph?”
“Humph.”
She fidgeted.
He smiled. “A man tries to please his wife. Often, there is much work for a woman to do in our camps, and she needs help, especially if she is the wife of a chief or a good hunter. A man takes other wives to help with the work; often they are his first wife’s sisters so that there is no bad feeling between the wome
n. A man’s first wife is the one who usually asks him to take another wife.”
“And does he have…marital…ah…rights with this other wife?”
He paused and suddenly the atmosphere around them fairly sizzled. He gave her a half grin. “What is it you are wanting to know from me?”
Katrina could hardly believe she had started this kind of questioning. But she couldn’t seem to stop it now, though she could feel herself blush right up to her hairline. “I… Nothing. Won’t you continue your story?”
He was slow to answer, his glance lingering over her. At last, however, he asked, “Do you remember what I had last said?”
“I… The young man was poor and could not offer for the woman he loved.”
“Yes,” White Eagle said the words, although he continued to look at Katrina, just look at her, his gaze as soft and as appealing as a caress.
“As it happens the girl’s parents loved their daughter well and knew that she would be unhappy with any other man but this one, and so they gave her over into the hands of an older, prominent man within the tribe, that he might care for her as a husband would, until the youth could prove himself worthy.”
“They what?”
“They gave her into the protection of an older and more worthy man of the tribe, that he might protect her.”
“They gave her to a man she didn’t love…as a bride?”
“Aa, yes, and no. You see, if a more deserving, young man made a bid for her, her parents might be forced to give her hand to someone she did not favor, but because they loved her greatly, they did not wish to do this, and so they gave her as a bride to an older man so that he might protect her until the man of her choice could make a bid for her.”
White Eagle stopped speaking for several moments and Katrina glanced at him, hoping to look at him from beneath the protection of her lashes. But he caught her look, which forced her to say to him, “You have shocked me, White Eagle.”
He moved forward. “Have I?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Did…did this man force her to perform…wifely…duties?”
Katrina felt the tingling awareness of a blush spread up and over her entire face.
“Of course.”
Katrina gasped.
White Eagle said, “She had to cook and mend and sew.”