Lying on a buffalo hide, the wool and lice itching, Chris felt the Indians each on a side in the pitch black with their broad backs to him, sleeping on the ends of the rawhide tugs they laid over his chest and legs so he couldn't up and make off from them unbeknownst. A barred owl dragged its voice low and sad through the woods. Awww, it kept saying, plagued at not finding so much as a mouse to make his dinner on.
Chris listened as the lonesome hurt came again into his throat, thinking of a home that wasn't his anymore, thinking of the days in front growing into years just poking along.
He let his thoughts drift with the far sound, remembering Tom Dickson setting with his moccasins under the supper board in his pap's own cabin, telling about living with the Shawnee who had moved west from the Susquehanna, farther away from the English and Iroquois. Tom asking Chris to come west with him. And Pap scowling at him and Tom and the idea all three. But Tom was still willing, like he never minded Pap was there at all, saying they could hunt and trap, and live fat.
Chris wondered now did Tom really mean it, or was he joshing, or just sly? Because there was something in Tom's eyes a body couldn't be sure of, something in those little eyes that saw whatever was coming and chose not to pay it any mind. They were eyes, Chris figured, that could see a heap more than any white man's.
So Chris and Tom fixed it beforehand, how Chris would be waiting at the big chestnut. And Tom—half white, who looked more Indian than the Indians with him, in his paint and snake rattles—came silent, not a moccasin whispering. Another prisoner, a big man who didn't know how to set his foot, had scared the wolves.
They travelled up the mountain, past the big timber with tender spring leaves, to where pine trees crowded together thick as hair on a coon's back, where the maples were furred with red and purple buds. They walked along ridges, over rocks and through streams, the Indians helping him along. And when they were safe away from the settlements, they even jollied him some with talk that was a little like water slipping around stones.
They came down into a valley and followed a river snaking its way around mountains that gentled into rolling bluffs at the Ohio River crossing.
After they rafted the Ohio, Tom shot a buffalo with the powder and ball they had put by. Just a yearling bull lying in some tall meadow grass when they came up to him, his life puddled with the blood on the ground about his mouth and nose. His hams were chewed most down to the bone where some wolves had deviled him. Tom did the butchering, wiping the blood from his knife on leggings already black with blood from other butcherings, giving Chris the tongue, the tenderest meat, spitted on a piece of spicewood to flavor it. "Eat hearty, Chris," he said, "Summer ain't forever."
But after they had done eating, one of the Indians cut a length of hide from the carcass and made a loop of it. He put the rawhide around Chris' neck like Chris was a dog, and ever after kept jerking him along. Hurry or get choked, they were telling him. Everything since had gone like they planned to get him here just so they could do him hurt.
Chris listened to the river slipping past the bluff where the Indian town slept, chuckling to itself, chuckling at him lying out here of his own choosing, like Indians talking. And maybe that was it. The things they didn't let come out in their eyes bubbled out in chuckling voices, and they were really glad all the time, and it pleasured them to see the hurt in some other body's eyes.
Chris thought back to when they made camp at sunset, inside a little grove of honey-shuck trees, the air sweet with blossom. Red rays slanted past the shiny trunks, and thick grapevines twined up and over the high lift of limbs. A rifle shot away, the Indian town was only a bunch of log-and-bark shanties crowding a big cabin in a dusty square, like the cabin was some strange female beast suckling young ones. All around were fields fresh-turned and raw, ready for corn and beans and such, he figured, with little dusty paths cutting through.
Two Indians fired their fusees in the air, a shot apiece. Glowing pieces of blanket wadding drifted to earth. They whooped twice, and in just a little, the men and boys from the town came filing like ants from an anthill, some in shirts of striped linsey or flowered calico, some in blue cloth or buckskin leggings, but most just in britch flaps cut from blue and red blanketing, their bodies spare and hard-muscled, brown as old copper, with the sun putting a dull shine on greased skin. Most of them clutched tomahawks, or steel-pointed war clubs. Boys carried pine knots and twisted pieces of root. They came smiling and laughing, like to a frolic, their long shadows stabbing toward him in the dying sunlight. They broke finally into a double line that stretched away like a giant copper snake, its slack body following the humps and curves of the land between the grove and town.
Tom untied the hands of the other white prisoner, a heavy-muscled man with pale gray eyes and a thatch of dirty yellow hair shaggy as winter wolf's fur. Tom said something Chris couldn't make out for the eager gabbling of Indians, the white man all the time smiling like he dared them to it. Then, of a sudden, he plunged between rows of flailing arms and clubs, running side to side, stumbling like he was crazy drunk in the narrow strip of ground they allowed he could have, waving his arms, trying to catch the licks meant for his head, the Indians howling so much like real wolves Chris' neck hairs prickled.
For a long while after the white man had funneled down the long neck of the snake, Tom sat quiet by the fire, staring at it like he was looking for something in the glowing embers. Then he got up and walked through the dusk into the town. A boy came to tell everybody to go home, that the fun was over for now. Chris remembered there was grumbling plenty while the long shadows drifted out of the grove, like they felt cheated, and hungered after more flesh.
Chris felt his shoulders and hindquarters cramping on the buffalo hide. The barred owl stopped its moaning and settled on a branch close by. He heard wings, sudden and quicksoft, followed by a swooping glide, and from a long way off, almost swallowed by distance, the fierce squeal of a rabbit dying.
Sweat flushed cold over his legs, the fear like a slow knife deep in his bowels. He went to sleep without wanting to, wondering what it could be they had saved him out for, getting river talk and Indian talk all mixed together in his mind, seeing himself a lone white speck on a river flowing with shiny brown bodies.
It seemed like he had barely shut his eyes when Tom shook him awake again. Tom's face hovering in the forest gloom, looking more Indian than ever with his shaved head and the shock of red-flecked hair, stiff with grease, shooting up like a woodpecker crest, and tied with snake skins, the rattles drooping, his nose bob like a silver rain drop quivering, ready to fall.
"Eat," Tom said in a flat voice. And Chris ate with he Indians who slept on the tugs last night, hunched over the fire, the buffalo ribs broiling on spits and dripping on red embers that flared at getting dripped on. Almost, he could forget what was coming, the grove was such a cozy place, like being inside. The trees were tall, and the leaves and thick vines shut out all but a glimmering of sun.
But soon the Indians came with their chuckling voices. They broke into a double line like yesterday. Now it was his turn to run between the rows of war clubs in coppery fists. He watched them come, only half seeing through the fog in his head. Tom knelt and fixed him with those eyes cold and black as polished jet, and said, almost kindly, "You go on now, and don't shame me."
Chris was silent as he got to his feet, the blood drumming in his ears, his breath cold in his throat and chest, pole-axe thin, his pap used to say, walking in a slow steady shuffle toward the first pair of copper bodies, his legs not even touching the tanned elk's hide of the breeches his mam had stitched him, his arms sprouting thin from the shirt she worked up for him using strong river nettle instead of flax—arms sure enough like the green spouts he had grubbed off stumps in the garden patch at home.
He kept his eyes down, off those unsmiling snake's eyes, hearing their chuckling river talk getting closer, like voices whispering, "Soonest started, soonest ended."
He readied himself, wondering would the first lick be hard enough it could kill, wondering would it hurt much, wanting it to be so it wouldn't hurt any.
He was already in the jaws of the monster snake when, out of the side of his eye, he caught the upswing and jerk of an arm. There was a coiling around his leg and a fierce snap as the coil pulled away in the same motion. It burned like a yellow jacket sting. Then they were all lashing at him, every last one just with these little river willows, not a club or tomahawk in sight.
He started to run, his legs swinging loose inside the stiff elk's hide, not even trying to fend off the curly snap and sting of the willows on his face, arms, and legs, the welts swelling with blood. He kept a steady pace past the fields, scenting raw earth, making for the shanties that were almost like the cabins at home. Then he was past the shanties, his feet pounding the warm bright dust in the square. A whip laced around his cheek, smacked an eye, and made tears run down his face, but he could still see the cabin in the center of the square—slim, gray-weathered poles, and smoke whisping though a hole in the bark roof swagged in the middle.
Then he saw the white man from yesterday standing in front of the door. Most of his shaggy wolf's mien had been scraped off. The rest was plaited and stuck full of red feathers that fell around the dried blood and bruises on his swollen face. His yellow plaited hair minded Chris of a cornstalk tasseling. Beside him was a fence and a little patch of climbing vines that ran up and over the crooked palings. Green gourds heavy with seed, slender necks swelling into round bellies. The white man was naked save for a blue-striped flap, beaded moccasins, and pewter bands on his forearms.
He was smiling, not the way Indians smiled, but with his eyes too. "Run for me," his eyes said. "If'n I done it, you kin. It ain't hard." Chris had a mite to go yet with the whips biting into flesh numbed to their lashing. The white man reached for him. Chris felt his fingers tighten around his wrist, pulling him free of the angry snap of the willows. Then it was over. But the white man's grip didn't slacken. Chris felt himself being lifted off the ground. His arm was slipping from the shoulder socket, the pain knifing as he swung clear of the ground. The white man, still smiling, fumbled in the vines till he found a slender neck and twisted it free. He brought the gourd down like it was a hand maul and he was riving boards. Lightning flashed, and Chris' teeth ripped the inside of his cheek. The white man let go his hold and Chris' arm jumped back where it belonged. Blood streamed from his mouth, soaking into the dust between his spraddled legs. Over the pain and dizziness Chris heard a voice: "By God, if'n I'll let anybody off that easy!"
Chris sat there dazed. He didn't notice the double line wavering, the men and boys melting back into the town and the woods. It was more like they had changed, and of a sudden they were women with voices pitched high like water flowing fast, women in loose, deerskin shifts with breasts dancing underneath, their hair not stiff and oily, but soft and sun-shimmered.
Their bare feet scuffed through the flour-like dust, raising a yellow cloud that stung his nose. They circled and rimmed him off from the cabins and woods with faces coppery like kettles that smoke had got all mixed in from being always over a fire. He smelled the smoke and the grease on their faces and bodies like their color had a smell, almost like seeing was smelling.
With unhurried hands they unbuttoned and tugged off his shirt and breeches. The outside air was surprising on his naked parts.
Then he was moving, with their fingers curled light and sure around his legs and arms. Not hard, man-fingers, but soft and strong too. A feeling began to tickle in his neck and spread through the rest of him, taking all the kick and buck away so he couldn't make a fist to hit with even if he wanted to.
Now he was stopping. Their light, strong hands were loosening. Soon, he thought, he would be floating in the clear breeze like a sparkling spider stand that had broken free in the wind. He smelled the water. He breathed in its damp coolness before he felt it cold, or heard it splash swirling around his hind parts. His haunches scraped over round pebbles in the shallows. His pale knees stuck out of the dark water like the roots of a sycamore sipping at the edge of an oozy spring in the lowgrounds, its bark scaling into the mossy water.
Then the women were on him again, shutting out the odorless air, bending over and shutting out the sun and sky, laughing and clucking to each other cheerful and frolicsome. Their hands went in the water and came out rough with gouts of sand they grabbed off the bottom, smacking and rubbing him so hard the grains began to mix with the flesh under his skin, and still not angry, but with that strong mother touch, washing him all over.
Of a sudden he could feel the blood coming hot and ready to his pizzle. He tried to cover himself with his hands, fighting the pull and grab of female fingers, the blood all the time pumping and pumping with their hands going over his legs and chest and arms, and him so hard he thought the skin would break. But he didn't care anymore, and it was like in winter when he couldn't stop shivering until he stopped fighting the cold and made friends with it, let it get inside his clothes and so became a part of it. Then he started to laugh, it coming out at last in a gush, his chest heaving like a bellows as the air pushed out and sucked back in again without his breathing, by its own self.
At last they pulled him, weak-kneed, onto dry land where he stood for the first time since they laid their light, coppery hands on him. He stared down at himself all over pink. Patches of blood welled out and trickled down his body, thinning in beaded water drops. His skin began to tingle and hurt.
Someone from behind folded a shirt around his shoulders, an Indian shirt caped to make it fine as a white man’s greatcoat. Tom stepped around in front, his mouth smiling. "This here ... what they done ... It ain't meant to hurt ... Just another way of killing white men is all ... rubbing out the white blood."
But Chris didn't hear. He took the ends of the shirt in his hands and pulled it closer. Holding it together with one hand, he brought the other up, feeling of his jaw, running his tongue over the jagged place in his mouth.
When he tried to say something, he choked on the sound coming from his throat. The more he tried, the more his throat strangled on the words, the muscles grinding till they squeezed together tight enough to snap a ten penny nail. Only when he stopped trying did the question troubling his mind come hoarsely to his tongue.
"Kin we hunt?" he said at last.