Jubal Sackett (1985) (7 page)

I knew the folly of asking direct questions, on some topics at least. I said no more, but waited, wishing for him to talk but knowing he would talk of these things only when the mood was upon him.

The night was very still. We sat late beside our fire building moccasins for tomorrow and other days. Knowing we had the time we each made several pairs, and I wished to wait and hope Keokotah would decide to speak.

Finally, he did. "Cold came early that year. I saw no bears, and even the birds flew low and fluttered from bush to bush. When the snow fell it fell thick, and soon it was deep and my tracks were deep like the tracks of pasnuta."

"Pasnuta?"

He looked at me with no friendly eyes. "The big one with the long nose. The Poncas call him pasnuta."

"I did not know there was a name," I said.

"All things have names." He spoke with dignity. "Pasnuta means 'long nose.' "

After a moment he explained. "Pasnuta ver' heavy. He makes deep tracks in snow."

"It was an early snow?" I prodded him.

"I was not prepared. I had meat and a skin, but the skin was not ready. There was no time to build a lodge, and the snow was falling ver' thick. I looked along the mountain for a place where trees had fallen or great rocks. I looked for shelter from the strong wind that was coming."

"And?"

"I found a cave. Not a big cave." He held his hands not two feet apart. "A broken rock, black inside. I looked and found a big room, big as three lodges together. I went inside and it was dry, no animal, nothing.

"Outside I broke branches from a dead tree. Gathering wood for my fire. Inside there was no wind but there was a place for fire. Ver' old, this place. Ashes, but no sticks, no coals. Stones, like so." His gestures indicated rocks placed in a circle for a fireplace.

"I make a fire. The room grows warmer. Not warm ... warmer. I think in that place it is always cool." He was silent and we worked on the moccasins. "The fire is burning. I put sticks. It burns brighter. Shadows move upon the walls. I look ... and then I am frighten."

"Frightened? Why?"

He did not speak for some minutes, and I waited, impatient but knowing I must wait.

"Too many shadows." He looked up at me. "Shadows made by the firelight, but other shadows, too. Shadows that move not with the others, taller, thinner shadows. I am frighten, but it is cold outside, cold enough to die with no shelter from wind, no fire. And I am Keokotah, who is a Kickapoo, and not afraid."

He paused. "I say to my thoughts, 'no more sticks.' If the fire go out there can be no dancing shadows, so I let the fire die, but when there are only red coals, there are still shadows, only they dance slow.

"I build the fire again. The shadows have not hurt me and if I let the room go dark ... who knows what can be? Maybe the fire is for the shadows. Maybe they love the fire because it makes the shadows live?

"The shadows live again. Only the tall shadows, the thin shadows, they dance slower than the others. I am frighten to sleep. All night long I feed the shadows with their firelight. I give them life and make offering of sticks. Yet I am frighten. What if my sticks are no more? I get up and the shadows seem to grow taller. Yet I show how small is the pile of sticks and I go out into the cold for more. I bring them back. I build up the fire.

"And then I think now I am slave to the shadows. When morning comes, will they let me go? I watch the fire. I watch the sticks. When morning comes I put sticks on the fire and then go out as if for more. And I run!

"Away through the snow! I run, I dodge among trees, I keep running until I can run no more. I am no longer frighten. I am free! I have escape!" He looked at me. "I will no go back. It is enough."

"And your skin? The one you took to the cave?"

He shrugged. "I think it is there. I do not want the skin. I will not go to the cave."

"You will show me?"

He shrugged. "I show you. I wait two days. If you do not come, I walk away, far away, ver' fast."

For a long time we worked in silence, and the moccasins shaped themselves in our fingers. And then I said, "You spoke of 'they live yet do not live' or some such thing. Did you mean the shadows?"

He was again silent, and when almost an hour had passed and we had put aside our moccasins he said, "There was a deeper cave. I went to it."

"Another room?"

"I do not know what is 'room.' Another cave, deeper into the mountain. I looked."

"And--?"

"Three lay sleeping. Three wrapped tight in skins. Skins hard tied about them. Only their faces showed, and their hands and feet."

"Tied?"

"Like buried. Like dead. A skin tied about each, but their faces looked old ... so ver' old! Wrinkled--" he squeezed up the skin of his face until it wrinkled. "When I lifted the pine torch their eyes were alive! They stared at me. They were blue eyes like the Englishman, only fierce, wild, strange! I was frighten. I run back to other cave. The shadows are better than they who lie sleeping with open eyes."

The story was strange, yet I believed him. Keokotah did not lie. What he told me was what he saw, but what is it we see? Is it not often what we expect to see? Or imagine we see? He was frightened, so what part was reality and what part imagination? Sakim had taught me to be wary of evidence given by others, for in all evidence there is some interpretation. The eyes see, the mind explains. But does the mind explain correctly? The mind only has what experience and education have given it, and perhaps that is not enough. Because one has seen does not mean one knows.

I, coming from another world, would have a different supply of information than Keokotah. My explanation might be different. Moreover, I was curious. Blue eyes? Unlikely, but possible, and the three bodies wrapped in hides sounded to me like a burial, and the bodies might be mummified.

By now I believed Keokotah was my friend. To keep a friend is important and to shame him would be to lose him. Therefore I must not make light of his belief in what he had seen or believed he had seen. I must prepare for what I was to see in a way he would comprehend.

I would make medicine.

I must convince him I was making medicine to prepare myself for the ordeal that lay before me. I must make sure he knew that I was impressed by his story and that only the strongest medicine would ward off the evils I must face. I went to sleep that night thinking of what I must do and how to do it.

At the same time I was intensely curious. Seagoing men have many stories that do not reach their landlubberly friends; some are merely superstition but some are dim memories of voyages made long ago by mariners long since lost.

Many an ancient archive has been lost in fires, destroyed in sieges, or simply allowed to decay through lack of interest or awareness. Among the greatest of seamen, for example, were the Carthaginians. Descendants of the Phoenicians, who were themselves among the greatest of seafaring peoples, the Carthaginians were denied access to many sources of raw material by their rivals and enemies the Romans. Eventually the Romans destroyed Carthage, but in the meanwhile their ships were continually at sea bringing back cargoes of raw materials and much else. Hanno the Phoenician had circumnavigated Africa hundreds of years before Christ. Crossing the Atlantic would have been much less difficult.

We do not know where the Carthaginians went except in a few cases, but like their relatives the Phoenicians they were great traders and travelers. The Arabs, who were among the greatest of seafaring peoples, had access to more of the Phoenician records than had Europeans through their captures of such great trading ports as Tyre, Sidon, and Alexandria.

It was little enough I knew except from sailors' tales or from the lips of Sakim. As the Moslem religion demanded a pilgrimage to Mecca from each of its followers, many succeeded in making the long trip from wherever they lived, and in so doing brought to Mecca many accounts not only of their homelands but of other lands of which they knew or had heard.

Hence my mind was not closed to the possibilities of who the bodies might have been. Long ago, when I was a small boy, my father had walked along the outer banks where the Atlantic curls its foaming lips against the shores of America. I had not seen the sea before although there had been much talk of it at home, for my father had sailed his own craft across that ocean.

The sea, busy moving sand as always, had uncovered an ancient wreck. There was a colony in Virginia by then, but theMayflower had not yet crossed the Atlantic with its Pilgrims, and the wreck we looked upon was old. Only a few gray ribs protruded from the sand. Perhaps only an abandoned ship that washed up here, perhaps some early venture. Not enough showed itself to explain its construction but my father examined it curiously. When I asked whose ship it might have been, he shrugged. "It is a construction I find strange," he said, "but I know so little of such things."

He kicked one of the timbers, as one will. "Solid," he said, "and built for the deep sea. This was no coasting craft."

Keokotah knew nothing of ships and the sea, and of all this speculation I said nothing. I knew too little myself, just enough to tantalize me and make me long to know more. Yet when I thought back to my opportunities I knew that few boys had grown up exposed to more than I.

My father's men had been soldiers, sailors, and wanderers. Sakim had been a seaman aboard a ship with my father, a prisoner taken at sea as my father had been, and several of his men had been soldiers who had fought in foreign wars.

Soldiering was an honorable trade, and many of England's men had fought on the continent or in Mediterranean lands. Each had stories to tell and we boys were avid listeners. Yet I had learned more because I was not the hunter and fisherman the others were.

After Keokotah had fallen asleep I lay long awake remembering my mother. A thought took me: she was in England ... suppose she, too, had died and I did not know? But then I would never know now if she were alive or dead.

I thought of Brian and Noelle. I had been closer to them than the older boys had.

How different their lives would be! In the England I had never seen they would live, grow, become educated. I longed for them then, and longed for my mother, too. But my star hung over the western mountains and I knew it.

What would I find there? What, besides a Natchee princess or priestess, or whatever she was? But I had nothing to do with her, only to find her and tell her the Great Sun was dying and she was needed. Remembering Ni'kwana, however, I began to wonder whether he really wished her to return or not. I think he feared Kapata and his ambition. But if she did not return, what life would there be for her? Where could such a one find happiness in our wild western world?

My mind was busy with that when my lids closed. How long they had been closed--it seemed but an instant--I do not know, but suddenly they were wide open, staring.

Something had moved in the forest! Some sound, some vague whispering of movement against leaves.

I put out a hand and touched Keokotah. The hand I touched held a knife.

Chapter
Seven.

Ghostlike, I slid from under my blanket and into the trees. As always, I had chosen my retreat before lying down. Often it is too late when the moment comes, and I wished to make no sound to give away my position. There was no need to worry about Keokotah. He had known nothing else since childhood and knew well what must be done.

We waited then. I knew not where Keokotah was, nor did the red coals give any light. Our blankets looked heaped as though we still slept. That, too, was an immediate reaction to attack.

There was no moon, only stars and scattered clouds above the trees. I heard no sound, but there would be none. These Indians knew what they did. The sound that had awakened me might have been a natural sound of the forest or an attacker, momentarily clumsy.

There would be no chance to use my bow in a first attack. Later--if I survived.

A wind stirred. Often Indians chose such moments in which to move, covered by the wind sounds. I waited, knife in hand. A low wind sifted through the leaves. I felt body warmth near to me, and when I looked to my right a faint gleam from a metallic armlet told me an Indian lay beside me, not two feet away!

My knife was ready, gripped in my right hand. He was lying parallel to me, and to stab he must rise up and strike with his right hand. I had known perhaps a thousand Indians and none had been left-handed. When he raised up to strike I would stab him, and it would be only an instant before he was aware of me.

He must have been a young Indian with not too many warpaths behind him, for he had eyes only for his chosen point of attack. He raised up to his knees, spear poised to throw into my heaped-up blankets. My blade cut sharply back and up, the point going in below the middle of his rib cage, driving to the hilt.

His eyes met mine in a moment of awful awareness. His spear was thrown as he took the blade. He realized death in that instant and I put my hand against his shoulder and drew back my knife. He started to cry out, but could not. His hand went back for a tomahawk at his belt but there was no strength in his fingers. He fell forward, made an effort to rise, then moved no more.

The fire blazed up from a handful of leaves and sticks thrown upon it. An Indian lay dead near the fire. Nothing else moved. Wind stirred the leaves again, and the blaze dipped in obedience to the moving air. And then there was a long silence, while the fire crackled.