The whites were in a frenzy. Others had come from the second circle of light. Some scurried about like decapitated chickens. A boat and another canoe were brought and shoved into the water. Men piled in. Both craft were propelled to the west.
Dega turned east, toward shore. For a moment he feared the current would take the canoe and sweep it out of control but he came to a slight bend and brought the canoe in. The bottom scraped as he dragged the canoe onto dry land, but he was far enough from the buildings that the whites did not hear the sound.
A crowd had gathered and was making a considerable racket.
Dega crawled through the high grass. He found the rifle and was slipping the leather strap to the ammo pouch over his shoulders when the grass parted and shadowy shapes closed in. He jerked the stock to his shoulder, then saw who they were. “You were supposed to stay where I left you,” he whispered.
“The dogs were too close,” Teni whispered. “We could not stay.”
Waku put a hand on Dega’s shoulder. “I saw what you just did, my son. You make me proud.”
“We must not linger.”
Little Miki had to sit on Tihi’s lap, but the five of them fit in the canoe. With Dega in the bow and Waku in the stern, they paddled for the far shore. The river was wider than they imagined any river could be. All went well until they were near the middle. Dega and Waku stroked furiously, making slow headway against the strong current. They were fortunate the river was not at flood stage or they would never have made it across.
As it was, the night was almost over when they gained the shelter of an inlet on the west shore. Nearly spent, their arms and shoulders aching, Dega and Waku concealed the canoe and the family sought the cover of a stand of trees.
South of them at a small dock was the ferry. Whites scoured the brush but none came anywhere near their hiding place.
“You did well, my brother,” Teni said, and tenderly clasped his blistered hand. “You led us through the marsh. You outwitted the whites. We could not have done it ourselves.”
“Manitoa has been with us,” Tihi said.
“Was Manitoa with us when our people were slaughtered?” Waku bitterly asked. “I never want to hear of Manitoa again.”
“You do not mean that, husband,” Tihi said.
“We should sleep,” Dega suggested. They needed the rest. They had made it across the Mississippi but they still had a long way to go to the mountains. Come sunset, they would push on into the dark heart of the unknown.
Twelve
Grass. So much grass. Day after day after day, before them and behind them and all around them. So much grass, Dega began to think his sister had been right, and the sea of grass did stretch forever.
The prairie was not completely flat, as they had been told. Hollows and gullies were common, and now and again solitary hills broke the monotony. Dega always climbed them, and always saw nothing but grass and more grass.
At first, game was abundant. Rabbits were their staple. Rabbit stew. Rabbit on a stick. Rabbit roasted. Rabbit rare. While they were still close to the Mississippi they saw deer but could not get close enough to bring them down. They had white hunters to thank for that. The deer had learned to flee from humans as they would from ravening wolves.
The farther from the Father of Rivers they traveled, the fewer animals they saw. Then they came to a stream, and for a while wildlife was abundant again. It was a pattern that repeated itself over and over.
Where there was water, there was life.
And where there was life, there were predators. Dega came across signs of foxes, coyotes, bobcats, wolves, cougars and bears.
For a long while, the family paralleled the rutted tracks made by whites bound for the mountains and beyond. The tracks led from one source of water to the next, from stream to river to spring to the next stream.
The plains were home to many Indian tribes, some hostile to travelers of every hue. Now and then Dega came across the tracks of unshod horses, and once upon the charred embers of a camp. But of the hostiles themselves, thankfully, the family was spared an encounter.
Dega did not use the rifle to kill game for fear the shot would be heard. Why he held on to the weapon, he could not say, beyond the fact that it held a deep fascination. He would stare at it at night while he kept watch and everyone else slept. Stare and ponder, seeking an answer to a riddle, an answer that proved elusive.
Dega practiced loading the rifle until he could do it with his eyes closed. It helped that he had, on occasion, seen whites from New Albion use their rifles. He remembered that the powder went in first, and that the whites had wrapped the lead ball in a patch before shoving both down the barrel using the ramrod in its housing under the barrel.
Dega did risk firing the rifle four times for practice. He recalled hearing somewhere that too much powder would burst the barrel, so he poured down what he considered a safe amount. It still proved almost too much, as the blast nearly tore the rifle from his grasp. He used less after that. He could not get used to the smoke and the flash; they always amazed him.
The truth be told, much about the whites amazed Dega. They were so different from the People of the Forest. So different, as well, from every tribe he had ever met or heard about.
Since Dega believed that all living things stemmed from Manitoa, it stood to reason the same applied to the whites. Therein lay the riddle to which he could not fathom an answer. For if That Which Was In All Things was also in the whites, then the very nature of That Which Was In All Things was not the nature he had imagined it to be.
The Nansusequa belief in Manitoa had a twofold foundation. Manitoa, the elders taught, was not only in all things, but maintained all life in a state of balance. Manitoa did this because to Manitoa, and Manitoa’s children, the Nansusequa, the purpose for life was to live in harmony with all other life.
Balance led to harmony. Harmony brought about balance. This was the creed by which the People of the Forest lived, the goal for which they continually strived.
Harmony. Balance. They were part of a great, grand cycle. The Nansusequa saw it reflected all around them. Rain, for instance, nurtured the soil, which, in turn, nurtured plant life, which, in turn, nurtured the plant eaters, which, in their turn, were nourishment for the meat eaters. Harmony throughout, balance throughout. Just one example among many.
The Nansusequa believed that for their people to thrive, or any people for that matter, they must become part of the grand cycle. They must nurture as Manitoa nurtured. They must achieve a balance with all living things.
They were an old tribe, the Nansusequa. They had been in the world longer than any other. It was why the other tribes called them the Old Ones. They attributed their longevity to one thing: the harmony and balance they maintained with the world around them.
Yet now, except for Dega and his family, the People of the Forest were no more. Their devotion to harmony and balance had not saved them from being slaughtered. Ironically—and herein was the heart of the riddle—they had been wiped out by people who, as far as Dega could see, possessed no sense of harmony or balance whatsoever.
It flew in the face of all Dega believed. So he sat and stared at the rifle and sought to make sense of that which was senseless. The whites defied reason. They were chaotic creatures who spread chaos wherever they went. They knew nothing of Manitoa, nothing of harmony, nothing of balance. They were the opposite of all Dega valued, the living embodiment of everything the Nansuseqa regarded as wrong to think and wrong to do, and yet the whites were spreading across the land in an unstoppable wave.
Where was the harmony? The balance? Again and again Dega asked himself those two questions. Again and again he could not provide an answer.
But Dega did perceive one thing. If the whites, who were chaos in human form, could defeat the Nansusequa, the caretakers of harmony and balance, then white medicine was more powerful than Nansusequa medicine, and their chaos more powerful than harmony and balance.
It turned Dega�
��s world upside down. It took everything he believed and rendered it meaningless.
Dega refused to accept that. There had to be an answer. There had to be a reason chaos prevailed. If he could discoverer what it was, if he could solve the riddle, his world would be restored to the way it should be.
If not—Dega did not like to think about that, for it meant that that which he had taken to be evidence of the balance and harmony in all things was nothing more than a hideous emptiness.
Now, sitting by the fire on yet another night under the stars in the midst of the vast grassland, Dega heard a buckskin dress rustle, and Teni sat next to him.
“Do you mind company? I cannot sleep. I have that problem often.”
“You are not alone,” Dega assured her.
Teni tucked her legs and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Will we ever sleep through the night again?” She shivered, but not from the cool breeze. “I hear them, brother. Hear their screams. Hear the cries of the young. I hear them when I am awake and cannot fall asleep. I hear them when I am asleep, and they wake me up. What am I to do?”
“If you find out, let me know,” Dega said. “For I hear them, too.”
Teni stared at the sleeping forms of their mother and father and little Miki. “They have no problem.”
“I have heard our sister cry out in her sleep,” Dega mentioned. “Our mother whimpers and gnashes her teeth.”
“Father?” Teni asked.
Dega made no attempt to smother his scowl. “Nothing. Ever. He does not cry. He does not become mad.”
“We Nansusequa have always prided ourselves on our self-control,” Tenikawaku said. “Father’s control has always been better than ours.”
“It is more than that,” Dega said. “He is lost inside himself and cannot find his way out.”
Teni leaned toward him. “Mother says she has never seen Father like this. At times he does not answer when she talks to him. At other times he talks to himself and ignores her if she says something.”
Dega had witnessed both behaviors. He was afraid for his father, afraid his father’s mind had gone elsewhere.
“I never thought Mother was stronger than Father,” Teni said.
“He will recover. You will see,” Dega said, but he said it without conviction. An entire moon had passed since the attack on their village, yet their father showed little improvement.
Teni leaned back and gazed at the myriad of stars. There were far more than she ever remembered seeing. “Father is not the only one who has changed.”
“Miki is much more quiet than she ever was,” Dega said.
“It is not her I am talking about, brother. It is you.”
“What have I done?”
“You have cast off the moccasins of a boy and put on the moccasins of a man,” Teni said.
“It is good I have, is it not?”
“Yes. But it is not that to which I refer.” Teni looked at him. “You have changed in other ways as well.”
“I am listening.”
“I notice you have not made a bow for yourself, or a lance. Yet once you would not go anywhere without one or the other.”
“I use Father’s bow when I hunt game.”
“But you always take the rifle, too. The weapon of the whites. The weapon of our enemies. No Nansusequa has ever used one. Strange that you do so now, after the whites have wiped out our people.”
“You make more of it than there is.”
“Or is it that you make less?” Teni placed her hand on the barrel. “Feel this. Feel how cold it is, feel how hard. As cold and hard as the whites. This is their weapon. It is not a fitting weapon for a Nansusequa warrior.”
“You talk nonsense.”
“I tell you true, brother. You are not the same as you were. I am worried for you, as I am worried for Father.”
Her comments gave Degamawaku much to think about as they forged westward. On several occasions water became scarce. When that happened, the wildlife became scarce, too, and they had to go without both for days at a time.
Two incidents occurred that none of them would soon forget.
The first was toward the end of the Heat Moon. They had come on a winding, shallow river, more mud than water. As they filed along a gravel bar, they heard grunts and snuffling sounds and repeated heavy thuds. Thick cottonwoods and undergrowth prevented them from seeing whatever was responsible, and they cautiously advanced until they beheld the prairie. Prairie that crawled with an incredible multitude of huge hairy beasts.
“Buffalo!” Teni breathed.
The first they had seen. Larger than horses, more powerfully built than bears, buffalo were the lords of their domain. Males were as high at the shoulders as Dega was tall, the females slightly less. Manes, beards, tails that ended in tufts, were common to both sexes. So were curved black horns, wicked weapons of death that could disembowel anyone or anything with deceptive ease. Some of the buffalo were rolling in bowls of dust. Others grazed. The young nuzzled their mothers. Bulls snorted and pawed the ground.
“We will never make it through them,” Teni said.
As it turned out, they did not need to try.
An hour before sundown, as they sat among the cottonwoods debating what to do, a low rumble shook the ground. They ran to the edge of the trees and saw a spectacle few people, white or red, were ever privileged to witness; the enormous herd was on the move. Long into the night and most of the next day, the migration continued; so many buffalo, counting them was impossible. Dega estimated the total to be hundreds of thousands. His mother was of the opinion there were more than a million, a number so high as to induce awe.
Only after the last stragglers had vanished in the distance did Dega lead the family into the open. Buffalo droppings were everywhere, almost as numerous as the blades of grass the buffalo had trampled in their passing.
That night, with no wood and scant grass to bum for fire, Dega collected an armful of dry droppings. He recalled that white farmers sometimes burned dry cow and horse droppings, so why not buffalo? He broke the droppings into chips and soon had a nice fire blazing. It gave off an odor not to Tihi’s liking and caused young Miki to pinch her nose, but they stayed warm, and that was the important thing.
The second incident of note occurred shortly after the Heat Moon had given way to the Thunderhead Moon. The Nansusequa had twelve moons: the Ice Moon, the Hungry Moon, the Cold Wind Moon, the Warm Wind Moon, the Planting Moon, the Flower Moon, the Heat Moon, the Thunderhead Moon, the Hunters Moon, the Yellow Leaf Moon, the Blood Moon and the Snow Moon.
They were following a ribbon of a river through country broken by islands of vegetation, a welcome change to the sameness of the grass, when Dega’s sharp eyes spied smoke. Three previous times during the course of their trek they had spotted the smoke from distant campfires, and had avoided them. This time was different. Maybe it was because they had gone so long without contact with other people, maybe it was simple curiosity, but by silent consent they spread out and crept through the brush until they could see the source.
A band of warriors had camped in a clearing. Teni counted fourteen. They were tall, these men, with long arms and long legs and craggy faces with large noses and wide mouths. Odd markings had been painted on their bodies, brows and cheeks. Their horses bore similar markings. They were armed with lances and bows and knives, and had a fierce demeanor that frightened her.
They also had prisoners.
A man and a woman were on their knees, their wrists bound behind them. Their buckskins were of fine quality. Both were shorter than their captors, and more heavily built. Heads high, they awaited their fate.
Dega took a liking to the couple. They had a quiet nobility about them that reminded him of his own people.
The painted warriors ringed their prisoners. One drew a knife and held it close to the face of the bound man and spoke, and the bound man answered him. Whatever the bound man said was not to the warrior’s liking. Suddenly he seized the bound man by the
hair, bent the man’s head, and with a single swift stroke, sliced off the man’s right ear.
Teni covered her mouth with her hand.
Miki buried her face in Tihi’s dress.
The bound man did not cry out. He sagged, with blood pouring down his neck, then raised his head as high as before.
The warrior with the knife moved to the woman. He addressed her as he had the man, and she replied in a haughty manner laced with contempt. The warrior gripped her chin so she could not move her head, smiled down at her, and cut off her nose.
Tihi turned away, cradling Miki. She motioned for Waku to go with them but Waku stayed where he was.
So did Dega. The warriors and their captives were from tribes his family might have dealings with in the future. The more he learned about them, the safer his family would be.
Torture was not new to Dega. The Nansusequa never practiced it, but other tribes in the region had tested the mettle of those they caught by seeing how much pain the captives could endure. Apparently, something similar was taking place here. Other body parts joined the ear and the nose on the ground. The painted warriors took turns chopping off fingers and toes, gouging out eyes, cutting off tongues, and more. When they were done, the bound couple had been reduced to quivering vestiges of ravaged flesh, barely recognizable as human.
“I wish they would put them out of their misery,” Teni whispered plaintively. She got her wish shortly thereafter.
The pair had their throats slit. The man was scalped.
Dega nodded at Teni to withdraw and she did so without complaint. He sidled to his father and touched his father’s arm, whispering, “We should go.”
Wakumassee did not move.
“Father?” Dega urged.
“Did you see, my son?” Waku whispered. “Did you see what they did?”
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