by Karen Kay
She had refused the Indian clothing he had offered her, and she still wore the green white man’s dress, now tattered and torn almost beyond recognition. It was a problem, her dress. The bosom of it came down too low and, in the state of its disrepair, had her practically bursting from its confinement.
She was small, yet full-breasted, and he wondered just what those mounds of flesh would feel like in his hands. In truth, he dreamed about it.
He wouldn’t press her, though, to find out. The debt of gratitude that he now owed her would not allow him to approach her in a sexual, more suggestive way. Not any longer.
But this wasn’t all he noticed about her.
Her hair gleamed bright and shining under the sunlight. And it was all he could do to look elsewhere.
She had given in to combing the mane of it with the brush he had made out of twigs tied with rawhide. At present, she allowed the full locks of it to flow smooth and full around her face. Sometimes she looked as though a warm, glowing sunset surrounded her.
He shook his head. What was he to do with her?
He didn’t know. He just didn’t know.
But he had to decide fast. He had precious few days left before he would come upon his own village.
He watched her, trying to read her thoughts. But because he no longer played a game of chase with her, he found himself less interested in breaking into the privacy of her thoughts.
He admired her, too. She had learned to skin an animal quickly, just as she had taken to smoking the meat, even to cooking. She was bright and intelligent, and he wondered that he had never credited her, nor others of her race, with much intellect or humanity.
In truth, he had never been given reason to until now. He had considered the white man a coarse, unrefined and ill-mannered race.
After all, what did the white man know of this country? Very little that Gray Hawk could see.
The white man became lost more times than he could find his way; he knew nothing of woodworking, of the making of useful articles and fine weapons; he could not remember twenty days past in perfect recall so that he could tell from tracking how many days since a print had been made.
He knew nothing of sign language, of scouting, of using a network of runners as a means of communication—and the white man was more often drunk than sober. Besides that, he seemed intent on fixing the Indian into that intoxicated state too.
No, to Gray Hawk’s point of view, the white man would not even have made a worthy opponent, let alone become the object of admiration.
“Gen-e-vee?”
She stopped her work and glanced at him.
Said Gray Hawk, his attention seemingly on the tiny statue he was carving, “Tell me again of your father and his work.”
“Are you thinking of taking me back to St. Louis?”
“Quiet, white woman. I am merely curious.”
“Please, Mr. Gray Hawk, if you would take me back, I would be forever in your debt.”
He held up a hand. “I tire of hearing this same prattle. I think you must say this to me more times a day than I can count. Now tell me what he does and why it is so important for you to return. I do not understand, white woman, how a man can be so dependent upon a woman for his own livelihood.”
She turned around in full, sitting down upon the ground. She said, “That is not true, Gray Hawk. Are you not dependent upon your women? Who keeps your home for you? Who makes your clothes, your food, your bags? Who cares for your children?”
He nodded. “Yes, I can see that you could say that. But these works that you mention are those of a woman, and it is a fact that a man cannot live without her. But he lives with her as a woman, not in competition with her as a man.”
“Mr. Gray Hawk, do you suggest—”
“Do I make a woman hunt for food for me? Do I require her to defend me? Do I ask her to make my weapons, to ensure their strength? These are my responsibilities. I might listen to her suggestions. I might even seek out her opinions, for she has many emotions that I do not often feel, and these emotions, these loves of hers, are her strengths. I often listen to her on these. But not on hunting, not on warring and certainly not on defense.”
When Genevieve opened her mouth to speak, he again held up his hand.
“What you do in your world,” he continued, “from what I can comprehend, is a man’s work. I can see, because I have had to teach you these things, that you did not cook before now, nor have I observed that you have talent toward the making of clothing or other items that are, in general, the woman’s sphere of activity. From what I understand, you do the same work as your father. How does he allow this? Does he not know that, to do so, he takes away the qualities and creativity of a woman, which are her beauty?”
She hesitated. She looked as though she might say something, but she held back, gazing away as though she studied something in the distance. At length, her attention still seemingly elsewhere, she said, “I have never heard such a viewpoint before and, I must say, Gray Hawk, it startles me a bit—yet I can see that it makes perfect sense to you. I must tell you, however, that in my society, for me to do such work as you describe would be to lower myself in the eyes of my peers.”
“Who are these peers, that they should judge you?”
“They are people of the elite status in my society.”
“Elite?”
“People who are…above…other people.”
“Above? You mean people of distinction within your tribe? People who have proven themselves to be able to provide, able to share their treasures with others?”
She frowned. “No, Gray Hawk. By ‘peers’ is meant people who are the children of great men, people who by birth are raised in status above others.”
“Just because they were born to a man of worth?”
“Yes.”
Gray Hawk paused, weighing what she said against what he knew. “How can this be so? Just because a man is a great chief does not mean his sons will be also.”
She sighed. “Let me see if I can help to explain this. Do you not have slaves in your society?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes we keep a captive and she becomes a slave to the one who captured her, doing much-needed tasks for the household. But she is not kept a slave. She often will marry into our tribe and thus become an equal to all others.”
The white woman brought her gaze back to him. “Well,” she said, “it is similar in our society. There are people who are servants who do the work of the household. By reason of birth, these people come from a lower class of people and so are hired to do our work. It is considered most degrading if a man of any higher class, and especially if a woman, were to do actual physical labor. Such would mean dismissal from the upper circles of our society. It is unseemly to do so.”
Gray Hawk paused. He took his time in trying to understand what this woman said, for it all seemed incomprehensible to him. Men and women who did no physical labor? He asked, “Are these ‘peers’ old people, then?”
“No,” she said. “They are all different ages. Simply by reason of birth, they are held in higher esteem than others.”
He frowned. “And these ‘peers,’ what sort of work do they do?”
She hesitated. “Sometimes they will run an estate that their father has left to them. Sometimes they will go into the same business as their father. But most often they are not required to work. To labor, to have to work at all, is considered a weakness.”
“And these slaves—”
“Servants.”
“And these servants do—”
“Most of the work? Yes.”
Gray Hawk shook his head. “Do your people not think of the life of that servant? Do they not consider that the servant, too, desires to enjoy life?”
“I do not believe it crosses many people’s minds.”
Gray Hawk gazed deeply at the woman to observe the truth or deceit of her words. Seeing her sincerity, he said, “I do not understand how this can be so.”
“Pe
rhaps because there are people who do not observe as you do. Perhaps, too, because our towns are so big, it is easy to ignore the strife and suffering of other people.”
He nodded. He still didn’t understand, but he would leave the subject for now. “So tell me,” he said, “about your father, and why his work is so important to you that you would risk coming into my country alone.”
“It is complicated.”
“I will listen.”
“No, I mean, there are so many things for me to describe to you, so many different things about it, that even if I tell you, you may not understand.”
“This could be so. There are many things about your society that I do not understand. But I will try.”
She sighed. She looked away for a moment as though collecting her thoughts, and then, at last, she started to speak.
“Very few people in our society hunt for food or clothing anymore. Our society is so complex that it is no longer necessary to do that. We exchange things for our food. We barter with others with something called money,” she said, going on to explain in detail, telling him little by little about money, about the written word, about what sort of work people did for this money in order to trade with others for the necessities of life.
It took her hours to get it all out.
He listened quietly. Some concepts he readily understood; some he asked questions about, over and over, until he at last had an idea of what she said.
When it was all said, Gray Hawk sat forward, commenting, “So that is why the white man lies and cheats—in order to get this money without having to do work. I had seen that this was so in the past. But I did not understand it until now.”
She didn’t say a word.
“Better is the Indian way,” he said. “At least within our village, a lazy man is never admired, while those who provide, those who share with others, those who are wise, are listened to and exalted with many songs and stories told of their generosity. Better that the white man throw away his money and learn to live more honestly with himself.”
She said nothing, just quietly observed him.
“So your father will not get this money that is promised to him if he does not deliver to the people who guaranteed him this money for the work that he is doing on the Indian tribes? And he cannot finish his work until he studies someone from my tribe?”
“Yes,” she said. “That is it.”
“How did he know of our tribe to bargain for such a thing?”
“The Blackfeet are well known among the white man for being both ferocious and difficult to bring to civilization. My father was already paid a good sum of money for this book because of his promise to seek out and learn about other tribes, and especially about the dreaded Blackfeet.”
Gray Hawk grinned. “Is that what the white man thinks of us…‘dreaded’?”
“Yes,” she said. “That is your reputation.”
“It is good,” he said. “It is good.”
He gazed at her.
“So, you will take me back there now that you understand?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “It is not my problem. I have my own to see to. I only wanted to know what had driven you here.”
“But Mr. Gray Hawk, if you will only—”
“Enough said. We go now. We break camp. We are close to my people, and I wish to find them before the best hunting season is over. Come, I will help you with that elk. We need to be on the trail soon.”
“But Mr. Gray Hawk—”
“I have spoken.”
He watched as disappointment came over her features; her eyes were downcast, her lower lip pursed. He set himself against feeling too much compassion toward her.
He had matters of his own to attend to, and until he had finished his own business, he could not consider hers.
At least not for now.
But come spring… No, it was not something he would tell her. He might change his mind.
Chapter Thirteen
Cooler winds blew here.
She had taken to keeping the deerskin covering around her shoulders nowadays, even as they walked.
She had grown used to thinking of this journey as a curious adventure, one she would write about if ever she returned to civilization. She only wished she had a journal with her, that she might jot down her observations of the Indian, of the wilderness, of this land.
She had never seen anything so beautiful as these plains, these valleys that they traversed, nor had she ever seen anything so wild.
The wind blew incessantly, though it was fragrant with the smell of wildflowers and sage. It whistled around stone-carved hills and whispered across the fields. Sometimes it blew cold, seeming to freeze her to the core; sometimes it felt warm, blowing her hair back as though it were a lover’s caress.
The fields were brown here, summer coming late to this prairie. The grass was dry, brittle and crunchy beneath her feet; the hills were rolling, seeming to stretch out forever against a wide blue sky, and always in the distance now were the mountains—snowcapped, majestic mountains.
It was all foreign to her—alien, yet strangely enticing, the feeling of space, of freedom, suggested by the vast expanse as comfortable and pleasing as if she had been born to it. She actually had the feeling of her thoughts gaining room, spreading out, giving her the opportunity to think clearly.
Gray Hawk, too, seemed to be pretty much at ease, and she noted that he no longer bore haggard circles under his eyes, an obvious sign that Gray Hawk had rarely slept on the earlier part of their journey.
In the beginning, she had never actually seen him sleeping; he had always seemed on guard, alert, watching. Always he had been busy doing chores, making weapons, fashioning clothing. She could never remember him resting.
But now that he was in the territory of his home, he at last appeared more relaxed and not obsessively concerned about setting up guard.
She remembered back to their talk when she had explained the nature of her father’s work and the hierarchy of her society.
His comments upon it all had been spontaneous and curiously insightful.
It was odd, she thought. Not only did his viewpoint make more and more sense to her; there was a wisdom about him, about all he said, that went beyond the instructions of her own schooling.
What he’d told her came to him not only from his own people and customs, but from his own observation of life as he knew it. And despite herself, Genevieve began to accept his point of view more and more, an unconscious thing. And she realized just how alien she must have seemed to him at first—alien and lazy.
It was an impression she meant to correct.
“Gray Hawk,” she said, pacing along behind him, “I am sorry for what I said about you earlier. It was wrong of me.”
He chanced a brief glance over his shoulder. “What was it that you said?”
“I was merely repeating things I’d heard without observing for myself the truth of the statements.”
“I am glad that you want to talk about this now. What was it that you said?”
“Oh, it makes no difference. I only wanted you to know that I am sorry.”
He suddenly stopped and pivoted around to confront her. “I would like to know what it is that you feel is so wrong that you must say something about it now.”
“Surely you must remember.”
He shrugged. “There have been many things you have said to me that were not complimentary. You have been a captive. I understand, and I have not thought much about it. Will you enlighten me now as to which one is not correct or shall I guess at one?”
She looked down at the ground. “I was ashamed the moment the words left my mouth, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”
“And now you can…say it to me?”
“I would rather not. I would rather just let you know I am sorry.”
He grinned. “And I would like to know what it is that has you acting so…”
“Stupid?”
“I do not k
now what this stupid is, but perhaps it fits. What is it?”
She sighed. She lifted her shoulders. She said, under her breath. “I am sorry I called you a savage and a beast. None of what I said was correct. It was wrong of me to say it.”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He gazed at her thoughtfully for a moment before at last bringing up a hand to touch her cheek. He said, “Think nothing of it. I, too, have had opinions of the white man that are not flattering. Perhaps we can say that we both have been ignorant. People are people, good or bad, but still they are people.”
She nodded, her glance still directed downward. He touched a finger under her chin to bring her face up toward him.
“There is much about you, Gen-e-vee, to admire.”
She smiled up at him, her gaze meeting his. She said, “Do you think so, really?”
He grinned. “Aa, I do.”
She closed her eyes, the smile still on her face.
And suddenly he was there before her, not more than a scant inch away. She could feel the movement of his head downward, toward her; she smelled the fragrance of his skin.
His lips touched hers.
“Gen-e-vee,” he whispered, his breath warm and fresh upon her own.
“Oh, Gray Hawk.”
His arms came around her, and she fell in toward him.
“This is madness,” she said, and he nodded.
Still, his lips came down upon hers once again. And she leaned in even closer.
He kissed her then, a lingering sort of kiss, the sort that demanded more.
He took; she gave gladly. His tongue swept forward, parting her lips, and she welcomed him in by returning the caress with all the passion of her own kiss.
“Gray Hawk.” His lips had left hers to trail kisses down her neck, up to her ear, back to her lips.
“Gray Hawk. I want… I…”
“I know,” he murmured. “I can feel the desire within you.”
“Why do I feel this way with you?”
“I don’t know, but I too—” His lips had made a path to her ear.
“I have from the start.”
That brought his head up so that he gazed down into her eyes. “You have?”