by Karen Kay
She sat up quickly.
He was there before her, not paying any attention to her, engrossed in…woodcraft?
What was the man doing?
A deer lay to the side of their camp—recently killed and gutted.
Ah, she put a label to the smell of blood. Beside him lay a spear, obviously hurriedly handcrafted. And though the point of it was of chiseled wood, not metal, it made no difference.
The blood on the end of it, the deer to the side of it, told its own tale. The weapon was deadly.
She wore no gag, and she rejoiced at the simple pleasure of having her mouth free to speak, though she said not a word, lest he become aware of it and take away her pleasure much too soon.
It was dusk. She had slept away the day here in their camp, which, tucked into a hillside, was hidden from even the most scrutinizing of views.
He apparently had not slept at all but had been working the whole time, making weapons, hunting.
“You could be of service by skinning that deer.”
She blinked. “Pardon?”
He pointed to the deer at the side of the camp. “The hide needs to be removed from the deer.”
She fluttered her eyelashes twice. “Surely you are not saying that you wish me to…”
“Skin the deer? Of course I am. It is woman’s work.”
Genevieve pouted, but it was all that she did. Had she been back in England, she would have fainted. But here and now, in this place, she had to content herself with a disdainful look at him, as though that alone would put him in his place.
It didn’t work.
He didn’t notice.
After a while, he gazed up at her and motioned her toward the deer.
She bristled. “Mr. Gray Hawk,” she said at last, “I take this as an affront to my womanhood. I know we come from different cultures, and I understand perfectly well that the women in your camp are all slaves, catering to and bending to the will of the men. But this is not so in my society, and I will not stoop so low as to do your bidding. I daresay, if you want the deer skinned, either do it yourself or find some slave to do it.”
Gray Hawk gradually ceased his work as she spoke, and Genevieve was glad to see that her tirade had found its mark.
She was just about to congratulate herself on the brilliance of her oratory when he said, “I would not want to hear what my mother and sisters would say to you if they heard you call them slaves. But very well,” he said with a smirk that caused her a slight bit of apprehension. “I shall call you ‘slave’ from now on, rather than ‘captive.’ Now, slave, skin the deer.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Aa, yes, go ahead. I would like to see you beg.”
“Sir?”
“You and your kind keep promising to beg, but you never do. What I am saying, slave, is if you do not wish to skin the deer, you will have to beg me to do it for you.”
“What? Why, I never heard of such a thing.”
He peered at her. “You have now.” He motioned her forward. “Go ahead.”
“Why, I would never—”
“That’s just the trouble.”
“I beg your…”
He shook his head, jerking it slightly to the left. “I do not see that you contribute much, if anything, to your society.”
“Why, I—”
He held up a hand. “Your menfolk do all your work: sewing, polishing, cleaning, cooking. I see you, the woman, doing nothing. No wonder the white race is a dirty, unkempt race with their men smelling worse than a bog during the hot days of summer. And no wonder they do not bring their women with them when they come here to our home. Who would want to support a woman who does nothing all day long?
“Not that I blame them.” Again, Gray Hawk held up a hand when she would have spoken. “How could a woman ever take pride in herself, in a job well done, if her menfolk constantly take away her joy in the creation of the home?”
“Mr. Gray Hawk, you—”
“Tell me I am wrong.”
“You are wrong.” She said it easily, though she didn’t believe it quite so quickly.
She’d never heard such a point of view before, and though she dismissed it instantly, something in what he said made her stop and think.
It wasn’t true, was it? All her life she had been brought up believing that it was the right of the upper class to do no work; that to do labor, even the task of something as simple as dressing oneself, meant to lower oneself; that only servants and the lower dregs of humanity toiled.
But now that he mentioned it, his words brought back a feeling of puzzlement that she’d experienced several times as a child. And she wondered, hadn’t she observed, when she was young, that those men and women who did the least had the most bitter personalities? Hadn’t she seen it just recently in their own Mr. Toddman? Hadn’t she witnessed a change in him that bordered upon criminal?
Could it be because, as Gray Hawk said, these people did not contribute? Was there some connection between lack of doing and no actual worth to society?
Surely it wasn’t so. The life of toil was an unpleasant one, at best. The servants, the people who labored, were seldom happy people. Or were they?
She shook her head as though to clear it. Why was she debating such things? Here and now? She, a Blackfoot captive, sitting in bonds of servitude, out on a lone stretch of prairie, had suddenly taken to philosophizing.
She looked up at Gray Hawk and found his gaze still upon her. He nodded his head toward the deer, which caused her to lean forward and say, “I am not dressed to do such a job. I will spoil my—”
She caught his glance as he gazed down at her dress. She too looked down.
She groaned.
Her dress was wrinkled, dirty and torn, and in places it gaped open, exposing to the air, to his view, to anyone’s casual glance, a look at her chemise.
Embarrassment overwhelmed her, and she made a stab at arranging her clothing, pulling it this way and that to bring it into order. She moaned. It didn’t matter. Nothing she did helped keep the garment in place. The pieces gaped back open.
She hadn’t noticed the state of it until now; she’d been too caught up in her own fears to see it, and she wondered abstractedly how the rest of her appearance looked. Gingerly, she brought her hand up to her hair.
She grimaced. She couldn’t even pull her fingers through the mass of it for all of the tangles.
What did it matter?
She rose then and discovered that she could barely walk. Her legs, every muscle in them, scarcely obeyed her commands, so stiff were they from running.
She stumbled over toward the deer. “I want you to know that I have never been reduced to such a low state as this,” she said to him. “And I would see that you understand that…” She looked to the ground, all around the animal. “Mr. Gray Hawk, I haven’t a tool to—”
“Here.” He threw her a sharp stone, carefully chiseled. The object landed at her feet.
She picked it up, looking at it as though she had never before seen a rock. And in truth, she hadn’t. Not like this. This stone had been carefully made into a knife.
She glanced at the deer, then at the “knife,” then back at the deer.
She slumped her shoulders.
“Take a part of the hide in your hands along the backbone,” he suggested, “and run the knife under it. It will tear apart from the meat more easily that way.”
She gazed at him, then back at the deer.
She picked up a handful of the carcass, held the knife to it, stabbed it under the hide.
Blood ran out.
She shrieked and fell back, her head spinning as though she had twirled around a number of times, her throat raw.
Some of the blood spilled onto her dress. She squealed.
“Haiya!” he said, coming over to squat down beside her, a look on his face that said he couldn’t quite believe it. “Have you never skinned a deer before?”
“Never!” She sat up.
; “A squirrel?”
“No.”
“A rabbit?”
“Of course not!”
“Haiya! Do your menfolk do even this for you?”
“Menfolk?” She shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know to what or to whom you are referring, Mr. Gray Hawk, but I can assure you that my father and I have more than enough servants to handle such matters as this, thank you very much.”
He shook his head. He looked as though he might like to say something, but with a jerk of his head, he did no more than pick up the stone knife that she had dropped. He gazed at the deer for a long time, his thoughts unreadable, until at last he said, “I will do it for you this time, but you must mimic everything I do so that when next I bring an animal into camp, you will know what to do. Do you understand?”
She hesitated. She glanced at him, down at her dress, over toward the knife that he held, and to the deer, which still lay to the side of the camp. At length, seeing no possible way out of this situation, she nodded.
It seemed more than enough for him. With only a grunt for acknowledgment, Gray Hawk began his instruction.
He showed her the proper procedure for skinning an animal, how to cut the hide away from the muscle, how to preserve the pelt to make it ready for clothing, how to cut up the meat; he even showed her what do to with the sinew that ran throughout the muscle, how tough it was and why his people used it for thread. He showed her the use of several of the bones, the brains—how they were made into a paste for use in tanning skins. And finally, all this done, he demonstrated what to do with the leftover bones and any other remains of the animal so that the wolves and other night creatures would feed on it, the animals then effectively erasing any traces of the Indian camp.
He made her repeat each task and every motion after him.
It took until late in the evening before the whole job was done, so meticulously did he instruct her—even to the making of a fire and how to cook the meat slowly over the flames.
She’d never be able to do it on her own, but she didn’t tell Gray Hawk. A camaraderie had built up between them as they’d worked, and she found herself reluctant to break it.
Said Gray Hawk, as they later huddled around the fire, the work finished, “I am taking a chance, lighting this fire while we are in Sioux country. But it is late in the evening, not a good time for warring, and I scouted all around our camp today while you slept, and I saw no trace of the enemy. But this may be the last time we will have a fire. Take pleasure in it.”
She nodded. “I will.” She paused. “Does that mean we will remain here the rest of the night? It is awfully late.”
“Saa, no. We will move on.”
“I see,” she said. “Where do we go?”
“North.”
“Oh.”
Silence. An uncomfortable sort of silence.
“What is to the north?”
“My home, my people.”
“The Blackfeet?”
“Aa, yes.”
“Oh.”
Silence again.
“Could you take me south to St. Louis?”
“Saa, no.”
“If I don’t arrive home with you, my father will be ruined, as I will be too.”
“That is your problem, not mine.”
“Please, Mr. Gray Hawk. We have time to go to my father and still come back to your people, I promise you. Couldn’t you make the trip south, just for a little while?”
“No.”
Silence. The kind that stretched on and on.
In due time, Gray Hawk said, “I might have gone with you willingly once—if you had asked.”
“You might have?”
“Once. But you did not ask.”
“I’m asking now.”
He shook his head. “It is too late.”
She sat up straighter. “Why is it too late?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Do not ask the why of it. Know that it is simply so.”
“But—”
“You ask too many questions. And though this is not a bad trait, try to discover your answers by observing the person in front of you, as is the Indian way. Oftentimes, the answers you seek are there for you to see, if you will look.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’ve never heard of anything so—”
“Go ahead. Try it.”
“Why, I never. I…oh, all right,” she said, sitting forward to gaze at him more directly. “I will.” She stuck out her chin and examined him. “What I see is…” She suddenly giggled.
“Do not laugh. Look.”
She stared at him again, this time surveying him as though seeing him for the first time.
He sat before her in profile, and she took her time inspecting him. High cheekbones; a handsome, though foreign-looking face; a slightly aquiline nose; a clean, straight jaw; full lips, the kind that had felt just right against her own.
Her stomach dropped.
He glanced over to her at once, as though he knew what she’d thought. His gaze fell to her mouth while his lips parted slightly.
He whispered, “Do not be discouraged, Little Captive. Just look.”
He turned his head back around to profile. “Just look.”
Long black hair that fell from a center part; perfect physique; dark, bronze-toned skin; broad shoulders; muscular chest; flat stomach; the white man’s black breeches; protruding genitalia—
She gasped and stared away from him at once.
He chuckled. He knew. He said, “Do not worry, Little Captive. You are enemy to me and, therefore, safe from me.”
“Why, I never… I wasn’t… I…”
“You forget, white woman, that I have practice at this. I can see what is on your mind. Now look at me. Look, and tell me what you see. The answers to your questions are right there, if you will only observe closely.”
“All right,” she said, bringing her regard back to his face. “I will.”
She gazed, she gawked, she peered. Smooth cheeks, she thought, cheeks devoid of facial hair. Her stare touched him gently. Full lips; long, straight eyelashes; dark, dark eyes; thick eyebrows that reminded her of his namesake. He turned all at once to stare directly into her eyes.
Then suddenly it was there before her: his past, his present, his feelings for her.
She knew what he thought, just like that. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to see.
She gasped and turned away.
“What did you see, Captive?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I saw nothing.”
She felt that he watched her, her own face now in profile to him. And though she tried to hide it, she could sense that he read right through her. And despite her own misgivings, she came to a startling truth: she’d never felt so close to another human being in her life. In that single glance, she’d seen his intentions, past and present. She knew his thoughts. She knew him.
She didn’t want to.
He grinned. He understood.
“Come,” he said. “Let us end this now and eat this deer meat so that we can start on our way. We have already lingered here too long.”
Genevieve nodded. And while she helped him to clean up their camp, it came to her again and again: at one time, he had liked her. He had even wanted her. And in the beginning, he would have come with her had she done no more than ask.
This was more than she wanted to know about him, and she marveled at the reality of her knowledge, just from the simple act of surveying him. Here was a type of knowledge, of certainty, she’d never dreamed existed. And she wondered that the instruction had come from an Indian, a savage.
But there was more. She also knew that he liked her no longer. She had read that meaning just as easily as she had seen the other.
Yes, he wanted her still; but because of his dislike, because he did not feel an affinity for her any longer, she was safe with him.
She sighed and looked up into the star-filled sky, marveling that out here, on this deserted stretch of prairie, she had
learned more about humanity in a few minutes than she had done in all her twenty years so far upon earth.
She bowed her head. Truly, the knowledge was more than she could easily handle.
Chapter Nine
They had stopped shortly before dawn, and she had begged for the privacy to go and wash her body, her dress, her chemise.
He had granted her that right but had made it clear that he would have to stand watch over her…for her protection.
The stream was shallow—not more than five feet deep in the middle—and cold, but refreshing for all that. And as she splashed into it, she was reminded of simple childhood pleasures: of swimming, of romping on a warm summer’s day, of England.
But this wasn’t a warm summer’s day. It was dawn, it was August, she was not in her safe English home, she was not a child and…she was not free.
He had gagged her again while they had traveled through the night. Despite all her promises to him that she would keep quiet, he had tied her, and they had carried on, running most of the time. She was barely able to keep up with him, her muscles protesting at this seeming abuse.
But it was dawn now, time to stop.
She breathed out slowly and ran her hand through the shallow water, the ripples and surges of the current carrying the pinks and blues of the morning sky from rock to rock as it made its way toward some unknown destination. She was glad the night was over.
She closed her eyes, listening to the sound she made in the water, enjoying the racket of her own splashing, while overhead a mourning dove cooed, welcoming in the new day.
“Omaopii, be quiet.”
Her? Or the dove?
She looked up at him, and he motioned her to silence before turning his back to her.
She sulked and instantly stabbed a glare at him where he sat on the rise just above the stream.
This was too much. He had dragged her, tied and gagged, across the prairie until she thought she’d never be able to walk again, and now that they had stopped, now that she had a moment to herself to tend to her aching muscles and sore feet, he wanted her to be quiet?
She opened her mouth to say something scathing, but was reminded that he might likely tie and gag her again, even during the day as she slept, if she antagonized him too much.