by Noah Gordon
The others grinned and quickly made him part of the game, which seemed to him to be more mayhem than sport. He was larger than most of the other players, more muscular. At first opportunity, the man with the ball flicked his wrist and sent the hard sphere hurtling toward Rob. He stabbed at it ineffectually and had to run to claim it, only to find himself in the midst of a wildcat fight, a clashing of long sticks that mostly seemed to land on his flesh. The long passing baffled him. Full of rueful appreciation of skills he didn’t possess, he soon handed the stick back to its owner.
While he ate stewed rabbit in Makwa-ikwa’s longhouse, the medicine woman told him quietly that the Sauks wished him to do them a service. All through the hard winter they had taken pelts in their traps. Now they had two bales of prime mink, fox, beaver, and muskrat. They wanted to trade the furs for seed to plant their first summer’s crop.
It surprised Rob J., because he hadn’t thought of Indians as farmers.
“If we brought the furs to a white trader ourselves, we would be cheated,” Makwa-ikwa told him. She said it without rancor, the way she would tell him any other fact.
So one morning he and Alden Kimball led two packhorses laden with fur pelts, and another horse without a pack, all the way to Rock Island. Rob J. traded hard with the storekeeper there and in exchange for the furs came away with five sacks of seed corn—a sack of small early corn, two sacks of a larger, flinty, hard-kerneled corn for hominy, and two sacks of a large-eared soft-kerneled meal corn—and three sacks each of bean, pumpkin, and squash seeds. In addition, he received three United States twenty-dollar gold pieces to give the Sauks a small emergency fund for other things they might need to buy from the whites. Alden was full of admiration for his employer’s shrewdness, believing Rob J. had arranged the complicated trading deal for his own profit.
That night they stayed in Rock Island. In a saloon Rob nursed two glasses of ale and listened to the bragging reminiscences of old Indian fighters. “This whole place belonged to either the Sauk or the Fox,” said the rheumy-eyed barkeep. “The Sauk called themselves the Osaukie and the Fox called themselves Mesquakies. Together they had everthin between the Mississippi on the west, Lake Michigan on the east, the Wisconsin on the north, and the Illinois River on the south—fifty million damned acres of the best farmland! Their biggest village was Sauk-e-nuk, a regular town with streets and a square. Eleven thousand Sauks lived there, farmin twenty-five hundred acres between the Rock River and the Mississippi. Well, it didn’t take us very long to stampede them red bastards and put that good land to use!”
The stories were anecdotes of bloody fights with Black Hawk and his warriors, in which the Indians always were demonic, the whites always brave and noble. They were tales related by veterans of the Great Crusades, mostly transparent lies, dreams of what might have been if those telling them had been better men. Rob J. recognized that most white men didn’t see what he did when he looked at Indians. The others talked as if the Sauks were wild animals who had been righteously hunted down until they had fled, leaving the countryside safer for human folk. Rob had been searching all his life for the spiritual freedom he recognized in the Sauks. It was what he had been seeking when he wrote the handbill in Scotland, what he’d thought he had watched die when Andrew Gerould had been hanged. Now he had discovered it in a bunch of ragtag red-skinned exotics. He was not romanticizing; he recognized the squalor of the Sauk camp, the backwardness of their culture in a world that had passed them by. But nursing his mug of drink, trying to pretend interest in the alcoholic stories of disembowelments, of scalpings, of looting and rapine, he knew that Makwa-ikwa and her Sauks were the best thing that had happened to him in this place.
14
BALL-AND-STICK
Rob J. came upon Sarah Bledsoe and her child the way one surprises wild creatures in rare moments of ease. He’d seen birds drowsing in the sun with just such rapt contentment after dusting themselves and preening. The woman and her son were sitting on the ground outside her cabin, their eyes closed. She’d done no preening. Her long blond hair was dull and snarled, and the wrinkled dress that covered her skinny body was filthy. Her skin was puffy and her drawn white face reflected her illness. The little boy, who was asleep, had fair hair like his mother’s, equally matted.
When Sarah opened her blue eyes and looked into Rob’s, everything rushed into her face—surprise, fear, dismay, and anger—and without a word she swept up her son and bounded into the house. He went up to the cabin entrance. He’d come to hate his periodic attempts to talk to her through this slab of wood.
“Mrs. Bledsoe, please. I want to help you,” he called, but her only answer was a grunt of effort and the sound of the heavy bar falling across the door.
The Indians didn’t bust the sod with plows, the way white homesteaders would. Instead, they looked for thin places in the grass cover and poked through to the soil, dropping seeds into the drills left by their sharpened planting sticks. They covered the toughest areas of grass with brush piles that would cause the sod to rot out in a year, so there would be more planting area in which to sow their seeds the following spring.
When Rob J. visited the Sauks’ summer camp, the corn planting was done and celebration was in the air. Makwa-ikwa told him that after planting came the Crane Dance, their most joyous festival. Its first event was a great ball-and-stick game in which every male participated. There was no need to recruit teams, it was Half against Half. The Long Hairs had half a dozen fewer men than the Brave Men. It was the big Indian called Comes Singing who brought about Rob’s undoing, for while he stood and talked with Makwa-ikwa, Comes Singing came and spoke with her.
“He invites you to run at the ball-and-stick with the Long Hairs,” she said in English, turning to Rob.
“Ah, well.” He grinned at them foolishly. It was the last thing he wanted to do, recalling the Indians’ skill and his own clumsiness. The words of refusal were on his tongue, but the man and woman watched him with a special interest, and he sensed that the invitation had significance he didn’t understand. So instead of waving the summons off, which a sensible man would have done, he thanked them politely and told them he’d be pleased to run with the Long Hairs.
In her precise schoolgirl English—so curious to hear—she explained that the contest would start in the summer village. The winning Half would be the one that put the ball into a small cave in the opposite riverbank, about six miles downstream.
“Six miles!” He was further astonished to learn that there were no sidelines. Makwa-ikwa managed to convey to him that anyone who ran off to the side in order to avoid his opponents would not be highly regarded.
To Rob it was a foreign contest, an alien game, a manifestation of a savage culture. So why was he doing this? He asked himself the question dozens of times that night, for he slept in Comes Singing’s hedonoso-te because the game would start soon after dawn. The longhouse was about fifty feet long and twenty feet wide, constructed of woven branches covered on the outside by sheets of elm bark. There were no windows, and the doorways at each end were hung with buffalo robes, but the loose construction provided plenty of air. It had eight compartments, four on either side of a central corridor. Comes Singing and his wife, Moon, slept in one, Moon’s elderly parents slept in another, and another was occupied by their two children. The other compartments were storerooms, in one of which Rob J. spent a restless night, studying the stars through the smoke hole in the roof and listening to sighs, bad dreams, windbreaking and, on several occasions, what could only have been the sounds of vigorous and enthusiastic copulation, although his host never sang a note or even hummed.
In the morning, after breakfasting on boiled white-flint hominy in which he tasted lumps of ash and mercifully didn’t recognize other things, Rob J. submitted to an unlikely honor. Not all the Long Hairs had long hair; the way the teams would be differentiated was in their paint. Long Hairs wore black paint, a mixture of animal grease and charcoal. Brave Men smeared themselves with a white clay. A
ll over the camp, males dipped their fingers into the paint bowls and decorated their skins. Comes Singing applied black streaks to his own features, chest, and arms. Then he proffered the paint to Rob.
Why not? he asked himself giddily, scooping out the black dye with two fingers like a man eating pease porridge without a spoon. It felt gritty as he drew it on his forehead and across his cheeks. He dropped his shirt to the ground, a nervous male butterfly shedding its chrysalis, and streaked his torso. Comes Singing stared at his heavy Scots brogues and disappeared, coming back with a pair of light deerskin shoes similar to those worn by all the Sauks, but though Rob tried on several pairs, he had a great foot, even larger than Comes Singing’s. They laughed together at the size, and the big Indian abandoned the cause and left him shod in his heavy boots.
Comes Singing handed him a net-stick whose hickory handle was as stout as a cudgel, and motioned for him to follow. The competing forces assembled in an open square around which the longhouses were built. Makwa-ikwa made a pronouncement in their tongue, doubtless a benediction, and then, before Rob J. knew what had happened, she drew back her hand and flung the ball, which swam toward the waiting warriors in a lazy parabola that ended in the savage clashing of sticks and wild cries and grunts of pain. To Rob’s disappointment, the Brave Men gained the ball, which was carried off in the net of a long-legged breech-clad youth, hardly more than a boy, but with the muscular legs of an adult runner. He was quick off the mark, and the pack followed behind like dogs after a hare. It was clearly a time for the sprinters, for the ball was passed several times on the dead run and soon was far ahead of Rob.
Comes Singing had remained by his side. Several times they gained on the swiftest men as combat was joined, slowing the forward movement. Comes Singing grunted in satisfaction as the ball was snared in the net of a Long Hair, but he didn’t appear surprised when it was recaptured by the Brave Men a few minutes later. As the pack coursed along the tree line that followed the river, the big Indian gestured for Rob to follow him, and the two of them turned off from the route the others had taken and moved across the open prairie, their pounding feet sending the heavy dew flying from the young grass, so it looked as though a swarm of silver insects sought to eat their heels.
Where was he being led? And could he trust this Indian? It was too late to worry himself with such questions, for he had already invested his faith. He concentrated his energy on keeping up with Comes Singing, who moved well for so large a person. Soon he saw Comes Singing’s purpose: they were running headlong in a straight line that might make it possible to intercept the others on the longer route along the river trail. By the time he and Comes Singing were able to stop running, Rob J.’s feet were leaden, he was gulping for breath, and there was a stitch in his side. But they got to the bend in the river before the pack.
Indeed, the pack had been left behind by front-runners. As Rob and Comes Singing waited in a grove of hickories and oak, sucking as much air as possible into their lungs, three white-painted runners loped into sight. The leading Sauk didn’t have the ball; he carried his empty net-stick loosely as he ran, as if it were a spear. His feet were bare, and for clothing he wore only a pair of ragged trousers that had started life as white man’s brown homespun pants. He was smaller than either of the two men in the trees but muscular and made even more fierce-looking by the fact that his left ear had been torn off a long time ago, a trauma that had left that side of his head knotted with scar tissue. Rob J. tensed, but Comes Singing touched his arm, restraining him, and they let the scout runner pass. Not far behind, the ball was carried in the net of the youthful Brave Man who had snagged it when Makwa-ikwa had thrown it into play. Next to him ran a short, burly Sauk in cut-down trousers that once had been issued by the U.S. cavalry, blue with a broad dirty-yellow stripe on each side.
Comes Singing pointed to Rob and then at the youth, and Rob nodded: the boy was his responsibility. He knew they had to strike before surprise was lost, because if this Brave Man ran away, he and Comes Singing wouldn’t catch him.
So they struck like thunder and lightning, and now Rob J. saw one of the purposes of the leather thongs tied about his arms, for as quickly as a good shepherd would have upended a ram and bound his legs, Comes Singing flung the guard runner to the ground and trussed his wrists and ankles. And none too soon, for the scout runner had turned back. Rob was slower in binding the young Sauk, so Comes Singing went out alone to face the one-eared man. The Brave Man used his net-stick as a club, but Comes Singing eluded the blow almost disdainfully. He was half again the other man’s size, and fiercer, and he grappled him to the ground and tied him almost before Rob J. was finished with his own prisoner.
Comes Singing picked up the ball and dropped it into Rob’s net. Without a word or glance at the three bound Sauks, Comes Singing ran off. Holding the ball in the net as if it were a bomb with a lighted fuse, Rob J. plunged down the trail after him.
They’d gone unchallenged when Comes Singing stopped him and indicated they had reached the place where they would cross the river. Another use of the thongs was demonstrated when Comes Singing tied Rob’s net-stick to his belt, leaving his hands free for swimming. Comes Singing tied his own stick to his loincloth and kicked off his deerskin shoes, abandoning them. Rob J. knew his feet were too tender to allow him to run without his boots, so he joined them by their laces and hung them around his neck. That left him with the ball, and he tucked it down the front of his trousers.
Comes Singing grinned and held up three fingers.
Though it didn’t represent the soul of wit, yet it broke Rob’s tension, and he threw back his head and laughed—a mistake, for the water that carried away the sound gave back cries of pursuit as their location was discovered, and they lost no time in entering the cold river.
They kept pace, although Rob used the European breaststroke and Comes Singing propelled himself by moving his hands the way animals swim. Rob was enjoying himself mightily; he didn’t feel like a noble savage, exactly, but it would take very little to convince himself he was Leatherstocking. When they reached the far shore, Comes Singing grunted at him impatiently while he pulled on his boots. The heads of their pursuers could be seen bobbing on the river like so many apples in a tub. When finally Rob was ready and the ball was back in his net, the foremost of the swimmers was almost across.
As soon as they ran, Come Singing’s pointing finger showed him the mouth of the small cave that was their goal, and the dark opening pulled him forward. An exultant cry in the Erse rose to his tongue, but it was premature. Half a dozen Sauks burst onto the trail between them and the mouth of the cave; although the water had obliterated much of their paint, traces of white clay remained. Almost at once a pair of Long Hairs followed the Brave Men out of the woods and attacked. In the fifteenth century, one of Rob’s ancestors, Brian Cullen, had single-handedly held off an entire war party of the McLaughlins by whirling his great Scots sword in a whistling circle of death. With two less lethal circles that were nonetheless intimidating, the two Long Hairs now held three of their opponents at bay by whirling their sticks. This left three Brave Men free to try to get the ball. Comes Singing neatly parried a bludgeon swing with his own net-stick and then disposed of his opponent with the well-placed sole of his bare foot.
“That’s it, in the arse, kick his murderous arse,” Rob J. bellowed, forgetting none could understand his words. An Indian came at him as if hemp-crazed. Rob sidestepped and, as the man’s bare toes hove into range, stamped down a heavy brogan. A few running paces beyond his groaning victim, and he was close enough to the cave even for his limited skills. With a snap of his wrists the ball was on its journey. Never mind that instead of a hard, clean shot it bounced its way into the dim interior. The important thing was, they saw it enter.
He threw his stick into the air and screamed, “Victore-e-e! To the Black Clan!”
He heard rather than felt the blow as the net-stick swung by the man behind him connected with his head. It was a crisp, so
lid sound, similar to one he’d learned to recognize in the lumber camp, the thunk made by a double-bitted ax coming into contact with a solid oak log. To his amazement, the ground seemed to open. He fell into a deep hole that brought on the darkness and ended everything, turning him off like a stopped clock.
15
A PRESENT FROM STONE DOG
He knew nothing of being toted back to their camp like a sack of grain. When he opened his eyes it was dark of night. He smelled bruised grass. Roasted meat, perhaps fat squirrel. The smoke of the fire. The femaleness of Makwa-ikwa, who leaned over him and watched him with young-ancient eyes. He didn’t know the question she was asking, aware only of a terrible pain in his head. The smell of the meat nauseated. Apparently she anticipated it, for she was holding his head over a wooden bucket and enabling him to vomit.
When he was finished, and weak and gasping, she gave him a potion to drink, something cool and green and bitter. He thought he detected mint, but there was a stronger and less agreeable taste. He tried to turn his head in refusal, but she held him firmly and forced him to swallow as if he were a child. He was annoyed with her, angry. But soon after, he slept. From time to time he awakened and she force-fed him the bitter green liquid. And in this way, sleeping, semiconscious, or suckling at Mother Nature’s odd-tasting teat, he passed almost two days.
On the third morning the lump on his head was down and the headache was gone. She agreed he was getting better but dosed him just as heavily, and he slept again.
All around him, the festival of the Crane Dance continued. Sometimes there were the mutterings of her water drum and of voices singing in their strange and guttural language, and the near and far-off noises of games and races, the shouts of the Indian spectators. Late in the day he opened his eyes in the dimness of the longhouse and saw Makwa-ikwa changing her costume. He focused on her womanly breasts, puzzling to him because there was enough light to reveal what appeared to be welts and scars forming strange symbols, runelike markings that ran from her chest wall to the areolae of both nipples.