Ride the Wind

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  "Something Good..." Naduah's head gave a little jerk at the mention of her friend's name.

  "The one who just died..." The women's voices dropped and they drew close, their heads together like hens going after the same defenseless beetle. Naduah had to strain to hear them.

  "Silver Rain is sure they were lovers. She told me so herself. And now Something Good is with child. Whose do you suppose it is?" Adeca, Deer, looked more like a buffalo cow than her namesake. She was considered the best source of gossip in the village. Naduah avoided her, not because she didn't like her, but because the woman didn't know her own strength. She would playfully clap the child on the back and almost send her sprawling in the dust.

  "It's probably not Pahayuca's. She still goes out each night to mourn the one who died. She's cut her hair off and speaks to almost no one." She Blushes managed to contribute to the gossip, yet maintain the air of one who was above such things.

  "What do you think Pahayuca will do?" Takes Down broke in quietly.

  "He loves her so much he can hardly see anything. He trips over his own feet when he walks." Deer rooted around in the foothills of her vast lap for her lost needle. That was the trouble with the slender steel trade needles. They disappeared so easily.

  "Pahayuca hasn't been able to see his feet over that stomach of his for years." She Laughs mumbled around the wad of sinew thread that she was softening in her mouth. With her fingertips she twisted one end of a piece of sinew into a fine point and allowed it to dry stiff. Now she was using her mouth as a spool and pulling the thread out as she needed it to lace the sole to the upper leather of a moccasin. The rest of the yellowish thread lay next to her in a loose, thick braid, just like the one Lucy Parker had had to keep her embroidery floss free of tangles.

  "I feel sorry for her." But then Black Bird felt sorry for anyone with troubles.

  "I don't." And Deer felt sorry for no one. "She has a chief for a husband and anything she wants. She should be grateful, and not run after other men like a shameless Tuhkanay, a Wichita woman." No man had invited Deer to run after him in a long time.

  "Is it true the Wichita women don't wear anything above their waists?"

  "So I've heard."

  "No wonder the men are always going off to trade for tobacco with them. Sacred rituals. A likely excuse." She Laughs almost choked on her sinew, and the rest of the women joined her. They howled with glee, rocking back and forth in the storm of it. They were still giggling when they took up their sewing again. And so it went.

  Naduah sat silent, her face burning and anger seething Inside her. Spiteful women. What did they know of Something Good and

  Eagle and love? She remembered the night of the honey hunt, when the four of them had sat around the campfire under the stars and talked and laughed at Eagle's preposterous stories. Eagle had mimicked many of the people they knew, and they rolled on the ground, aching with laughter. He had Deer down perfectly, even imitating the slower drawl of the Penateka.

  Something Good had been radiant that night. Her face glowed with happiness. Now the light in her eyes had been snuffed out, and Naduah despaired of its ever being lit again. It pained Naduah to see her friend moving woodenly around, working silently, never smiling. Maybe Takes Down would have an idea for a present she could make Something Good. And she decided to ask her friend to practice shinny with her. That ought to cheer her up. And she was going to have a new baby. Naduah could help her care for it.

  After Medicine Woman helped her with the fawn, she would go check on her new filly. And she had to find Star Name and show her the pronghorn. And talk to Name Giver about a name for her pony. And make a present for him. She'd have to ask Sunrise about that. Then there were the two loads of chips to bring in, and grapes to gather and pound. They would be moving soon, with all the bustle that entailed. The baby pronghorn had to be strong enough to travel before that happened, and she had to think of a way to carry her.

  Then there was the bag she was making for Sunrise and the doll she was sewing as a surprise for Star Name. There were herb-hunting trips with Medicine Woman, and Takes Down had promised to let her help with the next lodge cover she was asked to make. Sunrise wanted to teach her to shoot her bow and arrow and help her train her filly. There was the ongoing game of kick ball with Owl and her other friends. And the horses to take care of. Her days were full of responsibilities and an ever more tangled skein of relationships. She had begun to think in the language of the People, and there was little time to dwell on the past.

  Over the noise of the camp, the conversations and the children playing, the barking and neighing and the drone of Gets To Be An Old Man's medicine song, like a flock of turkeys with the croup, came Lance's chant. The crier rode slowly through the streets, holding up the buffalo robe that Naduah had abandoned. Lance always looked as though he were about to fall asleep. He had a droopy face with long features, and his expression was undiluted simplicity. But he had a perfect memory. For that he had been chosen by the band's council as the youngest camp crier anyone could remember.

  Naduah went bashfully to collect the robe, handing him the piece of hackberry candy Takes Down had given her. He looked down at her in that solemn way of his.

  "The boys found this near the gully. Upstream said it looked like Takes Down's."

  "Yes, Lance. I had to leave it. I was going back for it." Nodding, he rode off, deep in his own thoughts as usual, and nibbling absentmindedly on the candy.

  She had rescued the fawn just in time. If the boys had found her first she would have been someone's evening meal. She held the baby's head while Medicine Woman worked the hunting arrow out. The back edges of its point had been rounded so that it could be pulled out easily.

  As Naduah looked into the fawn's large, trusting eyes, she felt the bond that ties one to a helpless animal. No matter how many pronghorns steaks she would eat in her life, this doe would always be special, an individual and a friend.

  CHAPTER 18

  The hills around the camp shimmered and danced in the waves of heat that pulsed upward from them. The sun had seared the grass until it was brown and shriveled, showing patches of dry, light brown gravel underneath. The horses grazed listlessly or gathered in the shade of the few cottonwoods. Dust covered everything, and there seemed to be no color anywhere, just shades of brown rolling to the horizon. The sky was white and cloudless and glared down at them. It was impossible to look outside without squinting and shedding tears. Naduah broke into a sweat at the thought of activity.

  The sides of the lodges had been rolled up two or three feet to catch any breeze that might stray through camp. The heavy rolls were held up by stout forked sticks wedged into the ground along the tents' perimeters. Through the open bottoms of the lodges Naduah could see her neighbors lying on their robes or moving slowly about their necessary chores. Most people were sitting outside under their brush arbors as she and Sunrise and Takes Down were.

  The village was quiet, and Naduah realized it was the children's laughter she missed. They were all at the river, sitting chest high in its tepid waters. She would have been with them, except that she had promised Sunrise she would help him work on a saddle for her. Parts of it lay spread around him.

  Her pronghorn, Pah-mo, Smoke, and Dog lay curled up together next to her. They had tried to include her in the heap as part of the pack, but she pushed them away. Dog was faithful and loyal, but she was also hot and smelly and crawling with fleas. Now the two animals lay sleeping peacefully, exhausted from a hard morning at play. They had formed a strange friendship. Smoke would leap and paw the air while Dog grabbed her slender leg gently and shook it, snarling as though she would tear it from its socket. Then they would chase madly through camp.

  At first the other dogs tried to interfere. Two of the biggest ones advanced arrogantly, determined to have pronghorn for dinner. Dog stalked to meet them on her short legs, the hair bristling along the ridge of her back.

  "Go get them, Dog," Naduah hissed behind her. That was
all Dog needed. She went after the two, running so fast her belly skimmed the ground. Surprised, the other dogs turned tail and fled, and Dog chased them into a huge pile of gear that scattered with a clatter. Finally she and Smoke were left alone, ignored as though Smoke were just another big dog.

  Smoke's name had come to Naduah just as Star Name said it would. As she watched the fawn drift silently and lightly among the lodges, dogging her every footstep, Naduah thought of the wisps of smoke rising from the blackened smokeholes and floating gracefully on the wind. With Takes Down's help she had made a tiny collar of red trade cloth backed with buckskin. She sewed on the metal cones she'd been given at the eagle ceremony to make tinkling music wherever Smoke went. Now she could find her if she strayed. Also, the fawn had a bad habit of wandering up behind Naduah and playfully butting her as she tended the fire. Or she would put her cold, wet muzzle against the back of her friend's neck and give a loud whiffle of air. At least now Naduah had fair warning.

  Next to her, Takes Down was patiently twisting strands of coarse black horsehair, rolling them rapidly on her round thigh with one hand and feeding more in a little at a time with the other. Some of the long rope she was making would be woven into a heavy, prickly four-inch-wide cinch for Naduah's new saddle. Takes Down was waiting for Sunrise to finish the frame so she could stretch the wet rawhide cover over it and sew it in place.

  "Pia, Mother, why do most of the women wear red paint in the parts of their hair?" Naduah knelt, holding the twenty-inch-long curved wooden bar for Sunrise. It would be the seat frame when it was joined to the other bar by a pair of carved wooden arches. She held the light cottonwood as firmly as she could because Sunrise was drilling holes in it with a glowing metal awl. The afternoon was so hot already she hardly noticed the small fire he had near him to heat the awl and soften the glue he painted into the joints.

  "Sunrise, tell our daughter why we wear red in our hair." Takes Down knew the answer. She had an astonishing amount of information stored up in her, if one asked her the right questions to get to it. But she never discoursed on important matters when Sunrise was around to do it. That was his responsibility. He thought a moment before answering.

  "The red line in a woman's part ties her to Mother Earth, from whom everything comes and increases. It signifies the long trail a woman travels in her life, and it asks the spirits to make her fruitful like her mother, the Earth."

  "Father, will you teach me to ride?"

  "Yes. But why don't you ask Wanderer to help you when he comes back?"

  "I wouldn't dare. He wouldn't want to waste his time with a child. And a girl child at that." She was holding the arch in place, lining up the drilled holes in its base and the saddle bar while the glue dried. She didn't notice the look that passed over her head between Takes Down and Sunrise.

  "Hold this tighter, Daughter. Don't let it slip." Sunrise laced the parts securely together with green deer sinew that would shrink and harden as it dried. Then he repeated the process three more times and set the frame aside until the glue dried. The long, curved bars would parallel the pony's sides, and the arches would fit over her back. While he waited he picked up the graceful, saucer-shaped saddle horn and carved and smoothed it further.

  Although Sunrise was quiet, he was rarely still. His hands were always busy at something, carving or sewing or repairing. And he wasn't home much. With two families to feed he hunted often, although he rarely raided far afield, even when he was looking for horses. He had no brother, and he worried about what would happen to his women and children if he were killed. At times he must have felt burdened by it all, fettered when the younger men rode off on their horse raids hundreds of miles south, deep into Mexico. But Naduah never once heard Sunrise complain. About anything.

  Naduah and Star Name were working with her filly away from the distractions of camp. Star Name held the new bridle that Takes Down had made. It was a simple one that looped around Wind's lower lip and again around her neck. Naduah climbed onto a boulder and leaned her weight across the pony's back, talking to her in a low voice and moving very slowly. It had taken her a while to learn to mount from the right, instead of the left as her real father and uncles had always done. The People mounted from the right because they held their weapons in their right hands and it saved them the trouble of lifting them across the pony's back.

  "When we finish here, let's practice with our bows," said Star Name. "I brought Upstream's target hoop." The hoop was a willow rim four inches across with thong spokes coming from a one-inch ring in the center. The object of the boys' game was to pass an arrow through the center ring while the wheel was rolling.

  "He'll be angry with you for taking it."

  "No, he won't. He has four or five of them, and this one is too small for him to hit anyway. I think he'd like to lose it. Sunrise made it for him, and Upstream is embarrassed to admit he's not good enough for it yet." She never passed up a chance to take a poke at her brother, and he always returned the favor. "Anyway, they've all gone off on a hunting trip. After grasshoppers or hummingbirds, or some such big game. They took enough food with them to go all the way to Mexico. Which is a good thing. They'll go hungry if they have to depend on what they kill."

  "I hit the target three times in a row when Sunrise and I were practicing the other day."

  "Good. Soon we can go on hunts together."

  "We can't go on hunts. We're girls."

  "Yes we can. Women hunt. You haven't met Santa Ana yet. He's with Old Owl's band. But his wife hunts and raids too. We just have to work harder and prove we can keep up. Sunrise can use the help. He'll let us come along. He's not like a lot of men."

  Just then the pony stamped restlessly.

  "Easy, Wind." Name Giver had thought of a good name for her, just as Star Name said he would. And he had been pleased with the herbs she had brought him as a present. He listened solemnly as she told him how to prepare them and what they would do. He hung the bag she had made for them on a peg driven into one of the lodge poles. It gave her a good feeling to see them there when she visited.

  He had explained to her that the wind was the messenger of the spirits. It carried their words to their people. When souls were released it carried them to heaven. The wind went everywhere and saw everything. Nuepi, Wind, would carry Naduah wherever she wanted to go with the speed of a prairie wind.

  The girls were interrupted by Smoke, who saw the riders first. She went bounding over the rolling plain in a wide circle, the white patch on her rump reflecting the sunlight and giving off a pungent odor of danger. Her collar of thickly sewn metal cones jangled madly.

  "Smoke. Come here." Naduah put her index fingers in her mouth and gave the shrill whistle that Smoke and Wind had been taught to answer. The filly's head snapped up, yanking the bridle from Star Name's hand. Wind looked back over her shoulder at Naduah, who slid down from her pony. She tied a rope loosely around Smoke's neck when she calmed enough to be caught. As usual, they saw the cloud of dust first. Then the riders. One separated from the rest while the others stopped, waiting.

  "It's Deep Water, Owl's brother. They're back!" Star Name was running as she shouted. Leaping rocks and gullies almost as gracefully as Smoke, her braids flopped in the wind as she ran to be the first to spread the word. Deep Water was coming to prepare for the war party's return. Wanderer was back. Or he was dead.

  Without thinking, Naduah vaulted from the rock onto Wind's back, catching the pony so off guard she forgot to protest, although she'd never been ridden before. She jumped a little, bringing both forefeet down as though stamping on a snake, then obeyed the knee pressure and firm hand on the rein.

  Suddenly the world looked totally different to Naduah. She had ridden before, but always old, broken-down horses, and always surrounded by women as they moved the camp. Now she was alone on the plain with the wind ruffling her half-wild pony's black mane arid blowing her own hair. She could feel Wind's muscles rippling between her thighs and knees, and she felt herself swaying wit
h the rhythm of her horse's gait. She felt beautiful and wise and powerful and swift.

  She wanted to kick Wind's sides and tear off across the plain as fast and as far as she could go. To feel the wind whipping past her and to see the ground flowing away under her as though she were flying. To know that she was one with a beautiful, powerful animal. Instead, swept up in the drama that pervaded the People's lives, she advanced slowly to meet her friend or mourn him.

  Wanderer watched her approach, her body loose and relaxed, her left hand resting on her thigh and holding the rope attached to Smoke's neck. Smoke balked and skittered on the end of it, afraid of the mass of men and horses, the flapping streamers and fluttering feathers. Naduah's right hand held the reins as though she'd been born to ride.

  Under the grim mask of black war paint he almost smiled, remembering the dirty, cringing urchin he had carried behind him four months ago. No, she had never been cringing. Not even then. There had always been a spark in her. He recalled her face when she thought he was going to slit her throat as she lay staked out. He hoped he would meet death as bravely.

  Her body was tanned a rich, honeyed brown that set off her hair. Hours under the flaming sun had bleached it flaxen, almost white, and it blew like cornsilk around her face. As she drew closer he could see her brilliant blue eyes, fringed with long, creamy lashes. Her eyebrows stood out like downy white feathers against her dark skin. He could tell she had grown, and she carried her new height with dignity.

  He would have to talk to Sunrise about her as soon as he could. In spite of decorum and the grim cargo he was carrying, a smile twitched across his face when he thought of the woman she would become. The smile looked grotesque because his face was painted totally black, signifying that he had taken his revenge and the debt was paid. Setting his mask back into its scowl, he raised his lance in greeting, the feathers and streamers waving from it, and waited for her.

  "Hi, haitsi." She spoke in a loud, firm voice, unaffected by the fierceness of his look. "Hello, friend. My heart dances like the colt in spring to see my brother back safely."