Scalpdancers (18 page)

Blind Weed had grown hard being the subject of gossip and ridicule of the women of the village. Yet today, something had snapped within her and left her vulnerable. She couldn't control herself; the tears spilled down her cheeks. She couldn't be strong anymore. But why did Sparrow remain? To offer comfort? Her actions left Blind Weed completely dumbfounded … and grateful.

“Run while you can,” Blind Weed warned, slowly regaining her composure. She stood, stripped of her hardness, and wiped the mud from her eyes using the back of her buckskin garment. She patted smooth the front of her smock and her hands paused at her belly and rested there.

“I am carrying a child.”

Sparrow lowered her gaze to the woman's abdomen and her breath ran shallow. Such news was worth poor Blind Weed's tears. To be with child and without a husband meant a terrible loss of station. What man would have her now?

“Whose child?” Sparrow asked timidly.

“Tall Bull's.” Blind Weed sighed. It was a relief not to feel so alone. “You have seen Owl Bead. Plump as a beaver in the Leaf Falling Moon. He is no longer pleased with her. Tall Bull would take me to wife, but his horses are few. He has no suitable gift to bring my father.”

And he never will have, Sparrow started to say, but she wisely reined her tongue. She had no use for Tall Bull. He was her brother's shadow, nothing more. Black Fox led and Tall Bull followed. True, he had taken Crow scalps in battle, but no one had seen those two braves he had supposedly killed. His actions caused Sparrow to doubt the man's claims.

“Why did you stay with me?” Blind Weed said. She rubbed her eyes and studied Sparrow.

Sparrow said, “I know what such a sorrow is. I too have wept.”

Blind Weed now regretted her part in causing those tears.

“Better to be with the one whose name is in your heart and weep for the village you leave behind than to remain among your people as one already dead, for your heart will cease to sing,” said Blind Weed.

She drew close to Sparrow and opened her arms to embrace the smaller woman as she would a sister. They held each other and both experienced a kind of healing, for Blind Weed had found a kindred soul and Sparrow had heard from another's lips the truth of what must be done.

Blind Weed stepped back and for the first time in a long while she felt like smiling. It was good to find a friend where once she had seen an enemy, or at least an outlet for her own dark thoughts. She was sorry for that. Anger and fear had clouded her sight and like her namesake made her truly blind to the gentle soul who stood before her.

“I will ride ahead of you,” Blind Weed said. “It will be well for you not to be seen by the others riding in my company.”

“I will ride with my friend wherever I choose,” Sparrow told her. She shifted uncomfortably in her muddy smock and leggings. “But I shall bathe in the creek before entering the village.” Sparrow fell in alongside Blind Weed, who had already started toward the horses. The animals shied nervously at the two women whose hair and clothing were caked with mud. They mounted their horses.

Galloping from a field of morning glories and serpentine vines, the newfound friends followed different trails. Only time would tell whether or not they rode toward the same destination….

Sparrow lay naked in the middle of the creek, the sun-dappled water flowing over her shoulders and down along her slender legs. Her breasts were islands surrounded by rippling gold; her long hair wafted gently in the current where water sprites might dwell in the solitude of days. She lowered her head and the water rushed over her face. Only minutes ago she had discarded her muddy garments and immersed herself. After the initial shock she found the icy waters cleansed her spirit as well as her body. She submerged completely into utter stillness and only the flare of the warm sun overhead told her she was still in the world.

Then the sun darkened—as if in eclipse. She raised her head, brought her face out of the water, and opened her eyes. There was a man on the riverbank. Lost Eyes was watching her. Sparrow watched him, her features betraying her surprise. But she made no move to hide her nakedness.

“Lost Eyes,” she said and outstretched her arms.

He moved reluctantly and lifted his hand to hers. Her fingertips brushed his and he trembled.

“I am not a man,” he said.

“Prove it,” she replied. She lifted her hands toward the sun. Her palms felt warm. Water streamed from between her breasts and gathered glistening in the curls below her stomach. “The sky is clear. And yet, beyond the hills, there might be thunder.” She looked at him. “Is it any less a sky?”

“I have no vision,” Lost Eyes protested weakly. His own rising passion threatened his resolve.

Sparrow shook her head. It was always the same with him. “I will be your vision now. Come. Let me fill you.” She left the creek and lay down upon a carpet of green grass. Her flesh was cold from the water, but the sunlight helped. He removed his buckskins and covered her body with his own, and she was warm aplenty.

They needed no ceremony. The tribal music of wind in the branches of the willow, the call of tanager and crossbill nesting among the limbs, the playful courtship of otters splashing further up the creek, all were the music of their union.

After their lovemaking, Lost Eyes and Sparrow stretched naked on the creek bank and let the sun dry them. They held hands and they knew in their hearts there was no turning back.

“I will go with you,” Sparrow said.

“Could I leave my heart behind?” said Lost Eyes. “Or my hand? Or any part of my body?” He eased over and placed his head upon her breast and listened to the life force beating within. “You are a part of me. As I am a part of you. And it will be so until the All-Father calls us by name and we stand in the Great Circle with the Above Ones. And even then we will be as one.”

10

Rains came and for a time Elkhorn Creek overflowed its banks and flooded the willows. Boys played their games of war and hunt, and girls carried doeskin dolls on miniature cradle boards and sang them lullabies and rocked them to sleep. In all things the children imitated their parents. Boys learned how to stalk, to ride, and to kill with a single well-placed arrow. They learned how to speak to horses, to settle them with a word and a soothing tone. Girls learned of foraging, of the mysteries of roots and flowers and all wild growing things, and followed their mothers to the creek to capture the living water and carry it to their tepees. They learned to build a lodge, to care for it, to craft clothes from pelts and softened hides; they learned the mysteries of womanhood.

As the men of the village prepared their weapons, their thoughts turned to hunts and raiding parties into the land of the Shoshoni to the west or the Crow to the south. Women replenished their stores of medicinal herbs, tended the corn, and assessed what damage the wintry elements had done to the hide walls of their tepees. Some, like Yellow Stalk, the wife of Black Fox, prepared themselves for the new life they carried and dreamed of whether their first child would be a boy or a girl.

It was a time of lovers, when the renewing force of the world burned with fresh fire in the veins of the young men and women and turned their thoughts to the two-called-together ceremony.

For the aged ones spring brought memories of other blossomings, other futures that had become the past. It was a time of stories and song singings, a time to see the Great Circle with a new perspective, a time to dance the circle and enter the All-Father's loving song. Death and birth were part of the spring. Both were part of the song that had no beginning or end. Leaf after leaf, flower after flower, star after star, the song was there. All were born to hear it. Few were born to sing it.

White Buffalo had said he would leave when the moon hung full and silver-bright in the night sky. Yet the nagging fear remained among the Scalpdancers. What if his words were lies? Wolves had begun to prowl the ridges and this was seen as a bad omen.

Lost Eyes had grown to accept the judgment of the elders. Now it seemed almost a blessing, for Sparrow would be with him. The two could not be seen together and communication might have proved impossible but for Blind Weed. Through her, Lost Eyes and Sparrow plotted their escape. Ten days was an eternity to be apart, but there was nothing to be done for it. Black Fox must be convinced he had succeeded in driving an insurmountable obstacle between them. Indeed, he seemed to be completely taken in by the ruse.

So the days passed and Lost Eyes and White Buffalo readied themselves in secret until a night when the moon was not quite round in the sky, a night when none would expect them to ride out. Clouds like spiderwebs were draped across the sky, dimming the moonlight and painting the winding paths with patches of stygian dark.

Now was the time, with the village quiet and everyone asleep. These days of rest had brought White Buffalo nearly to full strength. Why the shaman preferred to leave secretly puzzled Lost Eyes, but he didn't argue. The fewer people who saw him and Sparrow the better. If Black Fox were alerted, there would be bloodshed.

An hour after midnight Lost Eyes walked through the village. No one stirred. A camp dog lifted its muzzle and tested the scent of the shadowy shape gliding past. But Lost Eyes had long since familiarized himself with the dogs, and they knew him.

Lost Eyes made his way unchallenged by man or dog to the lodge of Blind Weed. He hunched down alongside a tanning rack and flipped a couple of pebbles against the entrance flap of the tepee.

Nothing.

Immediately his pulse quickened as he began to speculate on all the things that could have gone wrong. Black Fox might have discovered their plan. But how? Blind Weed had carried his messages to Sparrow. Lost Eyes had never even so much as approached the enclave of the Kit Fox Society much less Black Fox's tepee. What had he missed? What had alerted Sparrow's brother and kept her from spending the night in the lodge of Blind Weed's family?

He tried another pebble and glanced it off the weather-roughened hide. As his mind raced to form a new plan, the flap opened and Sparrow came through the opening, followed by Blind Weed. Lost Eyes sighed in relief. The women scrambled to his side. Sparrow carried a pouch of her necessities, extra moccasins, assorted packets of herbs, and the like. She found Lost Eyes' hand in the night and squeezed it reassuringly. Blind Weed draped a small medicine pouch on a thong around Sparrow's neck.

“It will guard you,” she whispered.

Sparrow hugged her. “You are my good friend, Blind Weed—no, my sister.”

Blind Weed blushed. She was grateful for the concealing darkness. For days she had acted as go-between, bringing messages from man to woman. Without her help Lost Eyes could never have arranged to escape with Sparrow. He did not understand the strange and rather sudden friendship that had blossomed between the two women, and when he had asked Sparrow, she would only say that she had walked in Blind Weed's moccasins. Gratitude had kept him from pressing the matter.

Sparrow could think of nothing else to say. What else was there? A warm embrace spoke for her. For a brief second Blind Weed wished it were she, stealing off into the night with the father of the unborn child riding in her womb. She scurried back to the tepee and darted inside, returning to her bulrush bedding before her father stirred and noticed Sparrow's absence.

Lost Eyes led the way back through the village. The night grew brighter as the moon slipped free from its diaphanous bonds. Lost Eyes groaned. The last thing he needed was a well-lit escape route. Slipping past the sentries who guarded the entrance to the pass offered more than enough challenge for one night's work.

Another surprise awaited him at his own lodge, where the horses were tethered. White Buffalo emerged from the tepee dressed in his buckskins and carrying his rifle. A war club and knife were sheathed at his waist. What set him apart and marked him was the buffalo horn headdress that he wore. It covered his head and brow, and a white elkskin mask concealed his features. A coat of the white buffalo hide hung from his broad shoulders, making him a figure terrible to behold.

“You cannot wear such a robe,” Lost Eyes protested. “There are guards in the hills.”

“Let them see me. Whoever bars my way will die. And I will curse their flesh.” White Buffalo seemed to tremble a moment; then Lost Eyes realized it was the man's own peculiar silent laugh. He shivered despite himself. Sparrow's hand tightened on his arm. She wanted him to tell the shaman what they had decided. Now was as good a time as any.

“White Buffalo, your way is not my way,” Lost Eyes said. “When we have ridden clear, Sparrow and I will leave together.”

White Buffalo silently took a step closer. “I was going to teach you the truth, share my magic with you. We are alike.”

“No,” Lost Eyes said. “I would rather live my life without vision than steal it.” He began to gather his belongings, most of which he had already loaded onto the pack animal.

“You are a fool. Even worse … a powerless fool. But go where you will.” White Buffalo swung a leg over his blaze. He moved with such ease it was impossible to tell he had ever been wounded.

Moon Shadow emerged from the tepee. She handed Lost Eyes the shirt she had made for him. “When you wear the shirt, I will be with you.”

“I will wear it often, little mother,” Lost Eyes said.

“
Saaa-vaa-hey
,” Moon Sahdow muttered. “You will forget me.”

“Not as long as Cold Maker comes or the blossoms return with the Muddy Face Moon.” The young brave hugged her big round form for the last time. Something caught at his throat and made it difficult to swallow. It was “good-bye.”

Lost Eyes turned away and mounted his gray. The mountain-bred animal obediently held its ground. That was Sparrow's signal to leap astride her own mare. The moon drifted back into concealment and hid their features.