The buffalo herd showed no sense of threat. But then, they weren’t afraid of much. The small pack of wolves off to one side gave mute evidence that a calf or a young bull weakened by a fight had fallen behind, but the wolves were not threat enough to prevent the herd from grazing. Had they smelled the horses, they might have paid more attention. But Quaqui and his young son, Paskepaho, were downwind and not yet seen.
“Father, it is time for me. May I take one?”
Quaqui did not respond for a moment. Yesterday, when they had first seen signs of the herd, he knew this was coming. Paskepaho was tall for his age, within two fingers of matching his father’s height, and he was becoming muscular, his shoulders and arms starting to show the fullness of manhood. But his hips were still boyishly thin with no real strength in his legs. Stamina he had; he always led the other boys in distance races, but not great strength. Quaqui had brought Paskepaho on this hunt to hone his skills. One of the responsibilities of fatherhood. He’d known there was some risk in the hunt, but he’d thought, if it came, it would be from the aggression of an Ottawa war party. That fool Pini had brought it on when he killed Pontiac.
Why did he do it? Was the young fool just seeking glory? Did the British hire him to take vengeance on their tormentor? Was it Makatachinga that put him up to it? Wouldn’t have been hard to suggest eternal glory to that young stud. If Makatachinga did that, he’s the bigger fool.
The Ottawa had insisted on unfettered access to Illini land to hunt Pini. While they were not entirely polite about it, he’d not really had any choice. His Mascouten Bay village, the smallest of Illini settlements, could not have prevented two hundred warriors from doing whatever they wanted. Quaqui had met with Otussa, son of Pontiac, and told him that Pini wasn’t from Mascouten Bay, didn’t live there, hadn’t been there for over a year, and was not there now. Then he’d invited the Ottawa to stay the night and feasted them. He’d done it to give them freedom to see for themselves the young assassin wasn’t around. Better that than have to give in to their demand to search. The Ottawa party was large enough he’d not wanted it to come to a fight.
Quaqui knew it was possible it could get worse but didn’t think it would. They would eventually catch Pini and kill him and that would be the end of it. The Ottawa were not traditional enemies of the Illini, so they would go home. But their allies the Potawatomi and Kickapoo were what worried him more. They had always coveted the Illini’s fertile land.
Nevertheless, he was fairly certain that the hunt for Pini would occupy the search party for long enough to allow him to leave his village responsibilities and take up those of a father. Paskepaho needed to test his skills in a hunt to help him on his pathway to manhood and perhaps even leadership among the Illini. The buffalo herd on this side of the Mississippi was small and not often seen, but here it was. There was prairie and grass and so there were buffalo. He knew just what Paskepaho wanted. To take the risk. To prove his courage and his worth. He would have been disappointed in his son had he not wanted it. But he’d have preferred that it was part of a larger hunt, part of a larger party where he could keep a closer eye on his only son, to protect him. But the gods granted the gifts they granted instead of the gifts people wanted. It was not for him to stand between Paskepaho and this gift.
“There are just the two of us. We have no woman to do the work after and will have to do it ourselves.”
Paskepaho smiled up at him. “Then we will take just one beast, but it is mine.” It was not a request.
“All right, but make it a cow. I don’t want to deal with that thick hide on a bull. And listen to me. You have heard the stories. Your horse will be frightened of the horns. As it, and you, should be,” he added. “You know you must approach on the cow’s left and shoot hard behind the last rib and into the heart. I will be on her right, trying to keep her running straight. So, she may want to hook into your horse. If she does, give way. Even if it’s the last instant. If your horse goes down, we have no hunt. If you give way, you will lose a little ground but we will catch her again.”
Paskepaho smiled up again but said nothing. He turned his head back to the herd and started to slowly trot his horse toward them.
He is young but even now he thinks. The first time I did this I started out at full gallop and almost exhausted my horse before we caught the herd. And then Quaqui trotted after.
Not until they were within a hundred yards of the herd did one of the buffalo look up. They hadn’t smelled the horses and so grazed peacefully until the vibration of the earth caught their attention. At first only one looked and then more but none moved. When they were within fifty yards one bellowed and then the whole herd turned and started to trot away. Those in the front ran, but those in the rear were trapped by their own mass and could only trot until the way opened before them.
Paskepaho, relieved of the need for any stealth, let out a huge whoop and kicked his horse hard. He pulled an arrow from his quiver and notched it, his horse at full run. Ever a good horseman, he looked at ease with his knees tight to his horse’s ribs, arrow notched to the bow held in his left hand, and his right slapping his horse on the rump. One cow in the rear had to take a moment to turn her calf to the running herd and fell a few steps behind at the start. Quaqui ran his horse up on Paskepaho’s right and used his bow to point her out. Paskepaho nodded in understanding and with his knee moved his horse five feet to the left so they would come up on either side of her. Quaqui moved half a length ahead.
They caught the trailing cow at the full run, hearts pounding harder than their horses’ hooves and a prayer to Kitchesmanetoa on Quaqui’s lips that no prairie dog hole lay in Paskepaho’s path. Quaqui shot by the trailing calf and caught the cow, his leg so close to her that it rubbed against her furry hide. He would hold her from turning back to the bawling calf. Paskepaho was down low on his horse’s neck with the bow flexed at full length, arrow ready to fly. The cow looked left for the calf but kept her head low. Quaqui knew she would hook now and raise her horns as she came around. He yelled at Paskepaho to pull away. He did not respond. As the buffalo threw her horns toward Paskepaho’s horse her flank opened a bit, making the shot easier. Paskepaho was within a foot of her rib, lying almost prone across the horse’s neck with the weapon drawn so tight the arrowhead touched the fully flexed bow. At the instant the cow hooked, he released the arrow. His horse tried to jump away but took the end of the horn in his front shoulder. He went down and Paskepaho with him.
The cow, Paskepaho’s arrow buried behind her rib up to the feather, took two steps, staggered to her knees, and slid forward in the prairie grass, her heart stopping before she did. Paskepaho flew over the top of his staggering mount and rolled headfirst into the ground. He tumbled heels over head and then head over heels, his momentum carrying him gracefully up onto his feet.
Quaqui slowed his horse to a walk and came up beside Paskepaho, took in his son’s grin, as wide and white as a full moon rising. He allowed his expression to show none of the relief or pride he felt.
“See how bad your horse is hurt. I’ll get the calf.”
Quaqui walked his horse toward the exhausted and bawling calf, now standing twenty yards beyond them. As he approached, the calf stood staring up in confusion. Quaqui’s arrow flew just below its chin and straight into its heart. The small beast dropped where it stood.
By the time he got back, Paskepaho was standing by his horse, running his hand down the right shoulder near the open wound. “He’ll have trouble carrying weight while it heals, but the horn didn’t reach the bone. We’ll find out if he limps after he’s healed.”
Quaqui dismounted. “We’ll have to stay here until we can skin and slaughter these two. And we’ll have to dry the meat here. We should have brought one of the women. You take my mount and go back and load everything in camp onto the packhorses and bring it all here. I’ll have to stay and start the work. If we both leave, the wolves will have these two before we get back.” Quaqui pointed with his chin toward the two dead buffalo. “But be very watchful, my son. Particularly as you enter our camp. I don’t want you to have to confront angry Ottawas and their friends on your own. If they have entered our camp, just back out and return quietly. Now come have a treat before you go.”
The two walked together, each leading his horse toward the dead calf. Quaqui leaned to grab one of the calf’s front legs and roll it so it was flat on its back and all four stiffening legs straight up. He then took out his knife and opened the abdominal cavity, careful to cut around the stomach, which he released from the intestine and throat with practiced cuts. When he pulled the stomach free, he lifted it to his mouth and sucked from the stump of the esophagus. White curdled milk slowly ran down his lips until it covered his chin. With a loud burp, he handed the stomach full of curdled cow’s milk to his son, who drank deeply.
“Better even than fresh liver seasoned with drops of the beast’s own bile. I’ll have that ready for your supper when you return.”
He then handed Paskepaho the reins of his horse and watched him spring upon its back, pleased to see the fall had not left his son damaged. The father looked up at the son. “Remember, be very cautious of Ottawa, especially as you enter our camp.”
Paskepaho nodded and started to trot the horse away.
Quaqui stopped him with a word. “My son.”
The boy turned to look.
“Well done.” Both men let themselves smile.
* * * *
By the time Paskepaho returned, Quaqui had the hide off both of the carcasses and had butchered the calf. He was standing over the cow, stripped to nothing but a breechcloth, blood covering his arms and upper body. He had slit open the belly and removed the innards, which were lying in a pile next to the carcass. He stood next to his work and watched his son ride toward him with the two packhorses tied behind his mount, one loaded with the carcasses of the two deer they had killed yesterday and the other with supplies needed for the planned weeklong hunt.
As Paskepaho dismounted, his father handed him the promised buffalo liver, sprinkled with bile.
“Glad to see you’ve done most of the work for me, Father.”
“Woman’s work and there is plenty left. With only three good horses, we’re going to have to dry this meat before we go. You go find some dead wood and build a drying frame back in those woods. I want it to have a sheltered canopy to break up the smoke. And make sure the wood is dry enough to make very little of it.”
He pointed at the vultures slowly circling even in the lengthening rays of the setting sun. “I’m worried about those. There are too many for some small kill. Who knows what attention they may attract?”
“Father, I couldn’t see them while I traveled through the woods. It wasn’t until I broke onto the prairie that they appeared in the sky. The Ottawa will be traveling in the forest where they are not likely to see the vultures, aren’t they?”
“Probably, but we cannot be too cautious. I’ll be happy when we are back in the protection of our village. But for now, make supper of that liver over there.” He nodded over his shoulder toward the carcass. “And go find a stream to water the horses. Then go into the woods and find a small open space that’s covered above to make a little camp and put up drying frames. When you find a suitable place come back and tell me where you are. Meantime, I’ll finish this work. Now go.”
* * * *
A few days later, Quaqui and his son rode slowly down a wooded path, carrying their haul of dried meat. They were close enough to home now that each gully, creek, ridge, and even some of the larger trees were known symbols of place and memory. The trail sloped down the last hill toward the river, slowly growing wider and more heavily trod. They were anxious to get home and to revel in the glory of a small, but very successful, hunt and even more in Paskepaho’s passage toward manhood. The kill of the cow would mark him as a coming warrior, a youngster to be watched and evaluated by all his elders. But Quaqui led them slowly. He had a sense of unease that suggested he move at a pace that let him absorb all the information the land made available. That they had seen no one from the village was not, in and of itself, concerning, but it would not have been unusual to hear a welcoming voice by now. There was an odd stillness in the forest. Oh, there were birds flying between the trees, but he’d seen no small mammals since they started down the hill. He rode slowly. And then his nose gave evidence. He would not have expected to smell smoke this far away from the village, but it was there just at the edge of consciousness. Soon he would smell it fully.
“What is it, Father?” Paskepaho asked as Quaqui stopped his horse.
Quaqui responded by holding his hand up in a sign for stillness. Ever the teacher to his son, he finally spoke. “Can you sense the smoke? Not smell it or see it but sense that it is here?”
Paskepaho looked up as though to penetrate the forest canopy and twisted his head to find the wind and put his nose to it. But the wind was behind them and carried nothing but the musk of the decay of last year’s leaves on the forest floor. Finally, he shook his head. “No.”
“I cannot smell it yet, but it is there. Let’s lead the horses off the trail.” And then Quaqui kneed his horse to the left off the trail, leading the loaded packhorse behind him. Paskepaho followed, riding what had been a packhorse and leading his limping and wounded horse. Within several hundred yards the smell of smoke came to them both.
For another fifteen minutes, they wandered through the forest in an erratic path but one that led ever closer to their village at Mascouten Bay. At the outskirts of the village, Quaqui dismounted and motioned Paskepaho to do the same. He tied his horse and packhorse to a small tree and pulled the bow and his quiver from the saddle. Paskepaho started to follow. His father shook his head “No” and then spoke very quietly, making his words form on the inhale in a way that they carried no distance. “Tie your wounded horse but hold yours ready to ride. Keep your bow close. I’ll be back within half an hour.”
Paskepaho started to protest but the look on his father’s face was too stern to brook any disagreement. Quaqui slipped soundlessly into the dense forest.
The only motion was from the gentle wind fanning the embers of the dying flames. The wind carried ash and the smell of burning flesh. Every one of the two dozen bark wegiwas was burned down to ashes. Not even a dog moved furtively. Bodies littered the ground. At the edge of the village were the bodies of the warriors, mostly Illini. Through the smoke of the burned wegiwas he could see to the river. A few of the canoes appeared to be missing but most lay burned at the water’s edge. Bodies of women, children, and a few warriors lay scattered in the paths between the wegiwas. Many more on the beach. Fear, revulsion, and anger rose in him, but he remained as he was, motionless on his belly at the forest edge, surveying the destroyed village between him and the bay. The horror of the slaughter before him framed in the beauty of the summer growth of cattails and other littoral plants flowering in the bay made his sadness even less bearable. But he lay as he was, just watching and looking. Looking for any sign of life, either Illini or Ottawa. After fifteen minutes of observation, he rose and walked to examine what was the end of life as he’d known it.
The first corpse was Singing Bird, the old woman who knew more than anyone in the village, perhaps the nation, about herbs and their uses. They hadn’t bothered to shoot her. She had been too easy to catch. The back of her head was smashed, her brain open to the air. Someone had taken the time to place the blow low on the back of her head where it would kill her but not destroy her beautiful long silver scalp. That the killer had taken with his knife.
At least she was dead when he ripped it off her skull.
The first arrow he found was in the chest of Howls at the Moon. It was an Ottawa, clearly marked by the use of the feather of a red-winged blackbird. His hair was gone too. All their hair was gone. Well, all of those save Buffalo Fish’s family. They had been trapped in their wegiwa. Their hair had all been burned too short to pull as they baked inside. Buffalo Fish’s body, his belly and chest looking like a porcupine’s back with arrows for spines, blocked the door. Some of the arrows carried the distinctive red feathers, but not all. There were Potawatomi and Kickapoo shafts as well. It seems it took many to bring the big man down.
Quaqui walked very slowly. He was in no hurry at all to get where he was going. It seemed clear that the Ottawa had rushed from the wood and that many warriors had fallen at the edge of the village, trying to keep the murderers away from the families. But once the perimeter collapsed and the Ottawa got into the village, the fighting became each man trying to protect his own and cover their retreat to the edge of the bay and the canoes. He would count later, but there seemed to be as many as 120 corpses here. Not many would have gotten away. Later he would also count the burnt dugout canoes and try to estimate how many got out of the bay and into the river. There was time for all that. Time. That was all he had now. Time.
He knew Hukuwia, so he knew what she would have done. She had always been so pretty, tall with long legs, such beautiful glistening hair, and such magnificent breasts. But she was fierce. He remembered her fury when she had caught him watching her bathe when they were courting. She had rushed out of the pond and chased him, stark naked, with a tree branch she’d picked up while in full stride. She’d hit him hard across the shoulders and tried to smash his face when he turned to protect himself. It was the first time they ever made love. Hukuwia was fierce, and sometimes he thought this was as much her village as his. Every woman listened to her, some because she was wise, some because they feared her, but most because she protected them all.
He knew she would have done so today. That was what she always did—protect them. Paskepaho was their only child. She had no other children of her own to protect. The entire village was hers to protect and she would have tried. He would not find her at home. She would be on the beach. She would have been with the warriors in the last boat. But there was no last boat. Only the first boats got off. She would not have been in one of those.
Then he saw her. Naked and bloody, there on the beach. She’d tried to fight, but they had not been fearful enough to kill her from a distance. They had thrown her down and cut off her dress. He could see a light, straight cut down her chest and belly where the knife had cut past the soft skin of her dress and into the softer skin of her body. Her beautiful hair was gone, and the top of her head a mass of red gore where they had pulled her scalp off. Her chest was a mass of clotted blood as well where they had cut off the breasts he had spent so many happy hours adoring. And they had done it while she was alive. He knew because they had killed her slowly—arrows in the belly.
He stood staring down, beyond pain. He was almost removed, a warrior reading signs from the dead. He was standing, staring, his face expressionless when Paskepaho walked up. Quaqui said nothing as Paskepaho turned back to the horse he had been leading. When he returned it was with the hide of his buffalo. He covered the corpse that had been his mother, with the hide that had been his glory.
“Come, Father. We have much to do.” His son pulled him away from looking at the end of any joy, forever.
* * * *
They could not build a pyre large enough to stack 120 bodies, so they built three—one at the east end of the village, one at the west end, and one in the middle. They slung buffalo hides between two horses and used them to move each body from the spot of its falling to the spot from which it would rise. Quaqui did most of this work. His heart was cold while he did it. These were his people, his friends, his life. He should have been here. Should have fallen with them. But now he was alive and alone. He could not face that, the sadness and anger and utter sense that his life had no meaning any longer. But he could not allow his son into this new world. Hard as the unknown future might be, Paskepaho would find his own way. There had to be a way for him. There must.
He would have preferred to go. If there was one thing in life left for him to do, it was to warn Makatachinga and the Peoria that the Ottawa were coming for them. But he had to honor the spirits of these, his people, and not leave them to the coyotes and the crows. He would hope to come back later to collect and bury the bones, as was their custom.
He let Paskepaho stack the wood at the bottom of the pyres. By the end of the second day the three large pyres were each laid with logs crisscrossed on the bottom and two layers of bodies stacked on top. They were gruesome, but that only mattered in this life. What mattered for the next was that their spirits be set free. The fires would be huge and the smoke would carry far, but the Ottawa were long gone. If they had any remaining interest in his Mascouten Bay village, they would have come back by now. Quaqui wasn’t certain, but he suspected they would be on the way to the Peoria. That was the closest Illini village. They had come on foot and they had left on foot. By now they would be at least twenty miles from here. And if they saw or smelled smoke and came back, what did it matter? He’d try to get Paskepaho out and across the river, but he would be pleased to spend the remainder of his life killing Ottawa.
At dusk they lit the fires. Quaqui asked Kitchesmanetoa to receive the 120 souls that had been his life. Then he walked from pyre to pyre and lit the brush underneath. Paskepaho had stacked the timbers three deep, and the fires roared before the bodies became the fuel that released the souls.
As the sun rose across the river, Quaqui still stood. He stood staring into the glowing embers that reflected the residue of his life. Paskepaho had grieved long into the night but at some point left his father to his overwhelming suffering. Now he came back.
“What now, Father?”