The winter through which Raki and I waited as Scarlet Feathers for the first spring moon, in which we should become the dual Chief of a new tribe, had the quality of that pale quiet of early dawn which divides night from day. Since childhood there had been barriers to separate us; now only time kept us apart, time which flowed steadily as a river without rapids, knowing neither spate nor summer drought.
Our women stayed in the small encampment we had built for them away from the Squaws’ Tepees, and the thirty who had gone with us to the Gathering had now been joined by five others who would make with us the journey to the South. It was agreed that the men should also number thirty-five, near our own age, so that each squaw should have a chance to take a husband. There were, besides Dorrok, two older men who wished to wear our tribal mark on their foreheads, Tenak and Hajan, Scarlet Feathers with whom we had become friends on our way home from the Gathering. Tenak chose to come with us because he was always eager for adventure and thought that in the South we might find a tribe even more ferocious than the Black Feathers: Hajan because every year he spent several moons away from the encampment to explore country into which our people never penetrated. The North and West were familiar to him, and he also knew of a high pass over the mountains far to the South, to which he would act as our guide.
We hoped that as many girls as possible would find husbands before we made the journey, but neither Raki nor I had expected that all thirty-five would be chosen by Braves who were eager to fulfill the conditions of marriage under our laws. Perhaps it was not only the squaws but also the call of far horizons that made them so eager to be accepted. No longer could young men wrestle with each other to see who should have the first choice of squaws; now they must play the same part as the males of the forest, using their feathers, their songs, their prowess to beguile the female; as though they were turkey cocks or stags instead of Redskins, who used to be so proud of being aloof.
Gorgi’s choice surprised me. It was the girl called Cheka, whom four years ago I had seen gralloch a stag.
“You must not quarrel with her, Gorgi,” I said, “or she will take your hunting-knife to spill your bowels while you sleep. Is she still so greedy for the smell of warm blood?”
“No, Piyanah,” said Gorgi gravely, “I have made her forget her father, or at least the memory is fading—though it has been slow as taking a blood-stain out of white leather.”
“Her father? But surely she never knew his name?”
“It does not need a name to make a totem of hatred. He must have been very cruel when he took Cheka’s mother into the woods, for it left the woman crazed with hatred. Cheka only joined us at first because she wanted to learn how to use a bow so as to revenge herself on men. It was not deer she gralloched, but the man who was her father; not fish whose bellies she slit open, but the belly of the nameless man who had driven her mother mad.”
“She hated Raki as she hated all men?”
“No, because she knew him as the ‘not-man.’”
“And were you a ‘not-man’ also, Gorgi? How did you make her long to put her arms round your neck instead of her hands to your throat?”
We were sitting on a fallen tree by a frozen stream, and, until I became interested, I had been drawing pictures in the snow with the end of my bow. Now I paused and looked at him.
“Tell me, Gorgi, does she think of you as a ‘not-man’ too?”
To avoid looking at me he pretended to be absorbed in taking a thorn out of his foot.
“Would you be shy, Gorgi, if you had tamed a mountain lion?”
“Yes, if it followed me only when I was running away! I expect it sounds very funny, Piyanah, so laugh if you want to; but I will tell you the truth even if it makes you want to laugh. I don’t know why I chose Cheka. It was after I realized that no one except Raki ever meant anything to you—as a husband, I mean. I was jealous of Raki, and angry with you for preferring him to me; and being angry and jealous made me lonely. And Cheka was lonely too, for the other girls didn’t like her, perhaps because they thought she was savage, or else because they recognized she was more beautiful than any of them. I did everything I could to make Cheka admire me; if I thought she was watching I would do the most dangerous thing—a dive the others said was impossible, or a rock climb that made me sweat with fright. I wore new tunics and put bear’s grease on my hair. I made a canoe for her. But she remained indifferent. Then I fell out of a tree, of all the stupid, ridiculous things to do, and hit my head on a stone! It was noon when I fell and nearly sunset when I woke up; and I thought I must have died and gone to the Hunting-Grounds! My head was on Cheka’s lap and she was kissing me and crying because she thought I was dead.”
He sighed, “Women are difficult to understand, Piyanah, even when you love them. It was after she loved me that she told me about hating her father. Now she can’t even see someone else clean a dead animal without feeling sick—much less do it herself.”
I wasn’t sure what to say about Cheka, so I said, “I’m glad Rokeena has chosen Tekeeni.”
“Yes, I always thought she would after he stopped her being ashamed of the scar on her leg. They are like each other, Rokeena and Tekeeni, kind and loyal, and not very clever.”
We sat in companionable silence for a while and then Gorgi said suddenly, “There is a question I have wanted to ask you for a long time; and if it’s one you don’t want to answer—well, could you forget I ever asked it?”
“Of course, Gorgi.”
“Do you and Raki know exactly what men and women do when they go into the woods? I mean, have you done it yourselves, not just been told about it?”
“Yes, Gorgi, we have.”
He gave a long sigh of relief. “After the Black Feathers?” I nodded and he went on, “Tekeeni and I thought you had, though we didn’t know much about it then. At the Gathering some of the warriors from other tribes talked about women—usually it was after the feast when they were drunk. They boasted a lot, but they didn’t say anything practical. Cheka says she wouldn’t be frightened of me, but I keep on remembering the man who drove her mother mad. I’d kill myself if Cheka went even a little mad because of something I did. Is it dreadful for squaws, Piyanah?”
“It’s lovely for squaws—if both people love each other. You have only to watch deer, or chipmunks, or even gophers, to see they both enjoy the magic. It only becomes squalid and dreadful when it gets snared in the cruel briars of taboos.”
He looked so solemn that I tried to make him laugh.
“Lying down is very pleasant when you do it on moss or beaver pelts, but horrid if you do it on a thorn bush. Cheka’s mother got thorns, but Cheka won’t.”
“Thank you, Piyanah, for telling me,” he said fervently, “and could you tell Cheka too?”
“I think she’ll have to wait to find out for herself. Raki and I discussed whether we should tell the others and he said no, because if we did they might refuse to wait until the spring moon. It’s only fifty-three days now, so it won’t hurt them to wait a little longer.”
“But why should they wait?”
“Because,” I said firmly, “women whose bellies are big with child might be difficult on a journey. I want us to find our place of the corn-growing before we have babies.”
“But you and Raki didn’t have a baby,” objected Gorgi.
“That was very thoughtful of the Great Hunters; but now we know that babies are one of the things which happen when you use the magic we mustn’t expect them to look after us again. Of course it may be quite a long time before they decide that the child Raki and I are going to have is ready to be born, but I don’t think it’s fair to shout to the child and say, ‘We’re ready for you,’ unless we are. And I shall be too busy helping Raki, until we get the tribe settled, to be able to think enough about what kind of body our son would like, and how he would want to be born.”