by Parris Match
Dacoh took a quick glance up and down the pathway, assuring him of his unseen assault, providentially catching sight of no one. Grasping the still exhausted bound-fast little fawn, he rolled and wrapped the whimpering young woman tightly in the deerskin, making sure her head and face were completely concealed; noticing one of her moccasins laying on the path, he removed the other from her foot, stuffing them both within his waist-band. The other woman, dedicated guardian of the fresh untouched maiden, agonizingly struggled with excruciating effort to come to her aid; raising-up on her knees and the palms of her hands, wobbling drunkenly back and forth; the pupils of her eyes having retreated to a vacant crazed place, white red-cracked orbs searching for the child’s cries of distress, utter anguish, reaching-out to where she could not see; spittle draining and dripping down her chin, gravely wailing in a raspy-raspy earnest plea, “ tahtah”…,“ tahtah”…, “tahtah”…, and then the maidenhead’s, wounded and incapable, guardian tumbled in a raggedy heap upon the ground. Lifting and throwing the deerskin bundle over his shoulder, gripping and tightly hugging her thighs from the pummel of kicking legs affront of him, Dacoh lurched up the stunted hill; muffled cries emanated from the pressed sack draped down Dacoh’s back, but were short lived, because of the vigorous bouncing, and did not transmit afar.
With the squirming bulky sack cast over his shoulder, Dacoh trudged over the low crest of the hill; so as not to trip or to fall, he carefully but quickly descended the pebbly path to the beach. A few of the women sitting on the shore did not take notice until Dacoh with his stolen goods broke free onto the flat sandy surface; their heads cocked askance, they momentarily sat bewildered, not perceiving what they could see. The women of the River People had not witnessed any incursions into their valley first-hand; the outside notion of rape was entirely inconceivable to them. Dacoh was half-way across the beach before several of the women in some measure realized what was taking place. He was entering the slight wavering current of the stream by the time they started to react; the confused yelling and shrieking tumult behind him gave him added impetus to then push his wetted upper thighs forcefully through the thicker yielding water, yet watchful of his balanced step.
A faltering bluff hail of pelted biting curses and small rocks, landed and splashed all around him, one striking him stingingly on the rump, driving him up onto the cheering sandbar; he sprinted over the island of pebbly sand and into the shallower branch of the dividing river, completely out of range of the onslaught of rocks. Rapidly spattering through the remaining pool of the thin stream, on reaching the other side of the river, Dacoh turned to see the mad fervent gaggle of women with children, crazily jumping about, erratically waving, gesturing, and screaming; pleasingly powerless on the furthest opposite shore.
As a hopeful confusing deception, Dacoh ran with his lightened burden, quite observably downriver, skipping-over the boulder knobbed beach, and then to prance brashly into the dense concealing brush. Once hidden and out of eyesight of his helpless adversaries, he halted; blaring discordantly, yelling, screaming, howling, and yowling in a feigned wide-range of voices, and shuffling and stomping-around in the subplot of softened sand; Dacoh attempted to give the befuddled impression, that there were more than just himself alone. Weak shaky moans and retching shudders, came from the stolen sallow brown bundle over his shoulder; Dacoh could pay little mind. Drooled little vomit fell and dribbled down the back of his leg, squeezed unsettling juice, from this rump-held limp disconcerted pale yellowish gourd.
Confounded panic and frightened cackling seized the women, with their unprotected children, on the open exposed raping-field of the riverbank; they huddled, hens together, in a disordered clutch. Someone would have to go immediately for the men, one of the mid younger women took off running up the pathway to the village; while the remaining bevy of terrified women and brooded children, feeling vulnerable of brutal molestation, started to converge and quickly retreat to the top of the hill.
Continuing a little farther down the flat sandy deposit of the river but edging his way towards the hard stepped rust-colored-slate lowermost shelf of the sloping hill, Dacoh still muddled and tamped the ground until he arrived onto smooth solid terrain, which would hardly leave a barely discernible trace of his moccasin track. Dacoh immediately turned northward, slowly tip-toeing, not tapping a rock or kicking a twig, ever more vigilant not to allow a slight hint or suggestion, in revealing the true direction of their escape route.
The woman who was running to alert the men of the village, came upon the rock-stricken toppled guardian, Kala, laying defaced in the middle of the path, jerkily flailing and blubbering incoherently; she leaned over and touched the crumpled older ruined woman, quickly realizing there was little she could do, she swiftly dashed down the trail, to acquire the defense of the warriors; the vague apparitions and breath of intensifying fear in pursuit, as she sprinted towards the village of the River People.
Dacoh trudged wearily along, the meagerly shrub-ed, slanted slate platform, beside the disappearing edge of the crumbling hill; always being protected from view. Hidden from anyone on the other side of the stream, because of the impenetrable, tall dense thicket of brush and trees; an impassable disabling thorny curtain of bramble, bordering the sandy alluvial floodplain, between him and the river crossing. The limp hefty satisfying cargo, pressing upon his pinched shoulder, pummeled his taut strung hams and muscular thighs, upon the multi-leveled irregular stepped sandstone border, along the steep collapsing hillside. Hugging and to grasp, and gently patting, his round-limbed bulbaceous stolen golden treasure, Dacoh held spontaneous giddy little moments of delighted glee.
The alarmed and frightened eager woman messenger, racing thru the abrupt gullies, and up the long winding path, ineptly dashed to reach the village of the River People, slipping and falling along the way: she must soon alert the men and obtain their protection; the valley had been invaded; there was a treacherous band of marauders at the river; Kala, the guardian, had been struck-down; Tah, the virgin, was abducted; she must quickly hasten to their village with all her strength.
The streaming group of women and children, escaping the hostile riverbank, found the blubbering senseless guardian, Kala, staggering, stumbling, and crawling up the trail, her compelling instinctive duty pushing her on; “Tah”, “Tah”, “Tah”, “Tah”, “Tah”, she plaintively called out, as she reached-out into the white gauze of her shadowy emptiness. They voluntarily grabbed a tight hold on Kala, lifting and lugging her dead weight down the pathway; “Tah”…, she woefully cried; the women lumbered down into the ravine and up the other side, moving their floppy gelatinous burden, with the shepherded bleating children leading the way.
Dacoh’s pattering moccasins softly stamped along the hillside, a whispering telling breeze rustled through the leafier bushes, the aflutter of bitter and revengeful evil spirits were in pursuit, he must hurry; quickly; they are just behind him; he could feel their cold feather-fingers pressing the moist dampened dint of his lower back. The bundle on Dacoh’s shoulder remained inert, not a sound came from within the carried sack; thirst gnawed away at Dacoh’s gut, the milky mucous in his mouth thickened, incessantly he licked his dried lips, panting, panting, panting; He must Not stop.
The woman messenger hurried towards the village, exhaustion creeping up on her, breathing in sudden gasps, stumbling to the knee, then up the tearily confused trail, she wearily plodded, to reach the warrior men and get their help.
Resignedly hauling the comatose lumpy bulk of the cracked and deranged Kala up the crumbling path, the squawking gaggle of women, and herded little children, steadily moved closer to safety.
Breaking away from the slated sandstone base of the hill, Dacoh dropped, somewhat down, onto the pathway, that head up the rise, leading to the flat ledge; the first stone stoop to his escape passage from the river valley. This was the place where he had buried and squirreled away his weapons. Dacoh carefully and gently crouched and laid his bundle upon the ground, uncovering her
head he saw a terrorized wide-eyed pathetic sullied face looking back at him; he took his waterbag and tenderly washed the dirt and drying vomit away from the young woman’s ashen face and sticky lips. She involuntarily began to tremble and fitfully jerk, she was totally and completely faded, sallow and withered… and petrified.
The distraught worn-out woman messenger, unsteadily shuffled, and stumbled, through the crackling harvested field at the outside edge of the village, croakily hollering-out for help, but her dry spent voice did not carry far; the nearer she became, her beseeching plea was finally heard, heads-up, a number of alerted men in the village started running towards her. Pointing towards her clouded horizon, she frantically shrieked-out her mad appeal, concerning the despicable abduction on the river; “They seized Tah”, “They struck-down Kala”, “We have been violated”. The few forthcoming men loudly hollered for their other kinsmen, promptly a majority of the men in the village were surrounding the panic-stricken woman; seeing Tah’s father quickly approaching, she gravely reached out to him and whined; “Your Tah-h-h, she has been taken”. Turning to the men in common, she anxiously gave the details of the foul invasion, finishing with; “We could hear them mockingly crowing and cocky, celebrating their vile conquest, as they took their flight down the river”. Tah’s dishonored father, assumed confused command, immediately ordering the agitated swarm of angry men, about the bestirred dusty village; a call to arms, hollering; “Get your weapons”, “Get your weapons”.
Dacoh had quenched his thirst and replenished his strength of will; within a moment of his respite, he realized that he could not carry the stash of weapons and the coveted bundle at the same time. He also knew that under whichever circumstance, armed or unarmed, if he were overtaken, he would not have any chance of survival, so Dacoh left his dutiful comrades concealed in the sand. He dribbled a little water over his captives lips, softly flipped the deerskin cover on top of her ashen wide-eyed stunned face, picked her up, and placed her over his shoulder; hugging tightly to his discolored golden treasure, Dacoh started to climb the long crumbly pathway up to the elevated ledge, increasingly ascending precariously, steep powdery step by slippery slanted step; if he lost his footing, for the blink of non-attention, the resulting injury or loss would mean his destiny’s certain termination.
The overriding loud mocking slurs and insult; an exploding blaze of rage inflamed the men of the village, led by Tah’s violated and neutered father, they charged madly towards the downstream course of the river. They were overcome with seething hatred for anyone who would humiliate them, or openly and firstly defile their hallowed valley; crashing and clattering down the trail, uncontrolled wrath and wild warriors in a whirring dusty swarm, natural perceptions and sound judgment set aside.
On meeting the squawking nervous covey of women and wideeyed children, stumbling their way up the trail, burdened with the dangling soft fat mass of Kala, they halted for a moment and angrily interrogated the women. The frightened gaggle of hens jabbered all at once; fretfully, describing the brutal marauding assault beside the river, hysterically furious ranting and pointing, repetitiously supporting and tamping their common internal fear; “The bloodthirsty beasts are at our door”, “ Our children are in danger”, “ They have stolen our precious Tah”, “ We could hear them wildly howling in triumph”, “ The pack of wolves are escaping downriver“, “Go and kill them”, “Yes, Go and kill them”.
The fleeing thief, climbing the powdery shattered sandstone precipitous trail, up to the flat stone portico, with his tightly held unwieldy bundle, was grueling and demanding intervals of trial for Dacoh. With inching small particular well-placed footsteps, he gradually lugged his treasure to the crest of the elusive pathway; so exhausted, finally raised himself onto the belaying ledge, and staggered forward with the still embraced bundle within his controlled charge; then lastly lurched towards the backside of the huge cloaking boulder, and stood before the pile of rocks, where he had concealed, the utterly vital, blood filled pumpkin bowl.
Tah’s father and the well-armed warrior’s from the village, vehemently stampeded over the squat graveled hillock above the river; merging and funneling down the sidelong narrow path, they charged across the boulder strewn beach and plowed into the urgent-moving watercourse; crazily shaking their weapons in the air and pushing their way up and onto the mid solid sandbar, they hurtled to the other side; sloshed thru the shallower slower offshoot of the stream, and stormed down the riverbank, finally dispersing into denser brush, to locate and confront their known unseen enemy. The teeming pent-up bloodthirsty rage of the proud warriors of the inviolable River Valley, madly surrendered their common sense; they uncontrollably stomped through the thick underbrush, momentarily coming quickly to gather in a mustered halt; where Dacoh had prudently prepared and tamped, the fateful stage for his hopeful deception. The self-muddled soft sand; supports the hordes foolish confusion. Utterly infuriated, the warriors screamed-out their bloodcurdling battle cry, crashed riotously through the curtained bushes, and wildly swarmed down the flat sandstone slate edge of the river vale, to overtake and kill their despicable enemies.
Hidden from view, on the narrow yellowish-brown sandstone shelf above the river valley, behind the huge yellowish-brown boulder, Dacoh tenderly laid his wrapped bundle down upon the even hard slated ground; without delay tossed the folded deerskin completely back, to look over this precious cargo; his tightly packed, thrashed to nausea, virgin captive found in a pitiful condition. In their hurried getaway she had been constantly bounced and wildly flung-about and nearly drained of all resistance; shoulders askew, arms twisted and tied at the back, bruised and scratched lower legs, thighs scrunched firmly together in her lastly show of incensed defiance, her obvious impediment in mock display. Dacoh pulled out the young woman’s moccasins, he had stuffed in his waistband, and positioned them on the stone-slab; he then forcefully slipped the beaded ankle bracelets from her firm rigid unyielding legs, setting the turquoise bracelets next to the ornamented moccasins. Rolling the girl over onto her stomach, Dacoh straddled her writhing haunches, leaned forward and removed her bright-red headband and methodically pulled out each multi-colored decorative feather from her dark interwoven braid, arranging and displaying the colorful borrowed plumes inside her ornate moccasins and encircling them with the beaded red headband; he untied her notched chafed wrists, still keeping a wary tight grasp on them, the woman’s stiffening body wriggling and bucking in anticipated protest; Dacoh removed the turquoise and coppery bells, jingling wrist bracelets, and laid them at rest with the remainder of the maiden’s possessions.
Keeping a tight clasp on her wrists and holding them fixed against the small of her back, Dacoh maintained control of the woman with his powerfully built legs and brawny gripping thighs, squeezing and sitting astride her voluptuous hips, the animal heat of the moment could not be denied. Intermittently rising on his knees, he scrunched and peeled the doeskin garment upward, upward, and off of her balky kicking squirming body. Stripping the woman’s clothing away, leaving her naked beneath his panting sweaty torso, Dacoh retied her hands, by flanks rolled and laid her on her back. Re-squatting on his haunches, beside the bare body, he lustily gazed upon her roused peaked breasts, her retracted curved-in slender waist, and her overlapping smooth scissored thighs, defying his appropriate claim, to fulfill her puffed downy vessel. Dacoh’s breath was trapped in the back of his throat, but he must not violate her personal veil in slightest way; Ahcoo’ah and he had talked about this specific issue at great length. Dacoh disconcertedly flipped the deerskin over the nude young female’s loins and quickly arose to his feet; he must conclude his well-planned hopeful deceptive sleight, and escape from this perilous lethal place.
Dacoh took the distinctive but crumpled decorative buckskin garment and shook it even, flattening it on the ground beside the privileged display of elitist jewelry and ornamented fine moccasins. He retrieved the coagulating bowl of blood from the pile of rocks, poked a hole through the thickened
gelled crust, and poured an adequate quantity of the dark-reddish-purple syrupy liquid onto the central design of the doeskin garment. Circumspectly looking over the valley, he rid himself of the remainder of the blood and pumpkin bowl, throwing it far-flung over the side of the sheer slope, onto the lower fringe rockslide below. Last of all, Dacoh gratefully peered down the very long empty steep pathway to the floor of the river valley, rewrapped and slung this stripped valuable property over his shoulder, and soon disappeared into the narrow crevice of the sandstone escarpment. The youthful traveler and seeker exited through the only gateway of the greenest of beheld vales, from the private emerald Valley of the River People.
Tah’s violated and defiled father, so most livid with blinding rage, leading the furious band of swarming warriors; at last crested a higher fallen appending arm, of a southwest extended, crumbling range of craggy red mountains; that lay parallel and steeped, beside the chalky high-water edge of the wide grand muddy river. Barren chisel-ridged spines of the hand which dipped its boney fingers into the exact shore of the disappearing river, from the ribbed flanking inaccessible form of the eroding mountain range; with a clear unobstructed to blurred view, distantly seen far-off, along the glittering brassy ribbon of the vanishing stream. They could not make out any discernible presence of the fleeing enemy, not a brief glimpse, or the slightest powdered puff of a dust-whirl.
Becoming in doubt to what they were told by the panic-stricken women; without least delay, they spread-out along the narrow ridge, searching for any hint, that the ravenous pack of slinking sly coyotes, had crossed over this pre-inspected territorial border line. Finding absolutely nothing unseen before, it was soon realized, that the wild disorderly hostile pursuers had been cunningly duped; the sniggering lousy misleading rabbits were easily escaping through the second contrary hole. Slightly dampened down, by the lengthy time of chase and waning aggression, the faltering and circling flock of relatively awkward un-feathered squawking men, still driven by Tah’s furious enraged father, turned and raced for the only other fracture in their defense, set within the westerly towering sandstone barrier of the river valley.