Comanche Dawn Page 24

  Arriving at the hollow tree, the men found that the cache of beans and grain had spoiled, for La Salle had failed to cover it sufficiently. Minime laughed at this, and mocked the absent La Salle, strutting about effeminately, pursing his lips and saying, “You complainers and whiners will be surprised when you see the cache of food that I, the Great La Salle, have left in yon hollow tree!” Turning to the mapmaker, the valet continued: “You, Sieur Hole-in-the-Head, get thee hither and fetch it!”

  The Malconents laughed, but just then the German named Hein spotted some buffalo trailing into the valley. Hein, Casaubon, and Minime went upstream to shoot them, succeeding in killing three. Jean’s spirits lifted as he and Goupil helped butcher the buffalo and roast the meat. But then, at this hopeful moment, an ill wind began to blow.

  Sieur Moranget arrived from La Salle’s main camp, riding the only horse left to the Frenchmen. Moranget, who was La Salle’s nephew, began to accuse the buffalo hunters of trying to hoard the meat and keep it from the others at La Salle’s camp. He was followed soon by the Loyals, Saget and Tesier, who arrived on foot. There was already bad blood between La Salle’s nephew, Moranget, and the Malcontent, Casaubon. Jean didn’t know what was behind it until that day in the valley of the River of Canoes, when Casaubon let his temper get the better of him.

  “Shut your mouth, you bastard!” Casaubon shouted at the officer. “Minime, do you know what this stupid bastard did on the expedition last year? He sent my brother back to the fort alone when he became ill. Alone! My brother was murdered by savages, but the real murderer sits there on that horse!”

  “You insolent pile of shit!” Moranget shouted from the saddle. “I will see you flogged for such insult. My uncle will deal severely with you.”

  “Your uncle may kiss my ass, you stupid bastard!”

  Later, Goupil pulled Jean aside and said in a hushed voice, “My friend, if they come to murder, remember your promise to me. You must take to the forest. If the Malcontents gain power, secure aid among the savages. Find your way back to Fort St. Louis, or to the Spanish outposts. Speak French to yourself every day. Do not make marriages with heathens. Do not end up like d’Autray, a tattooed savage.”

  “Save yourself and come with me,” Jean begged.

  “No. I must remain loyal to La Salle. If it comes to mutiny, and I am unable to save him, I will save myself, but I cannot go with you. I am old. The Spaniards would hang me as a spy, and perhaps you as well for being in my company.”

  “Then we will both return to Fort St. Louis.”

  “And wait for what? All of France has forgotten about that wretched fort. I must try to reach Canada and send aid for Father Membre—and you if you go there.”

  “Then I will go to Canada with you.”

  “No! Canada is seven hundred leagues. It is probably impossible to reach, but I must try. Your best chance is with the Spaniards in the west.”

  Through his decades on the wild continent, Jean L’Archeveque had heard many memorable sounds. Like the first bull elk he heard bugling in an echoey mountain basin, the first grass fire he heard popping and roaring across the tallgrass prairies, and the first Apache war cry he heard knifing through the fog of a riverbank. But the sound that awoke him that night long ago on the River of Canoes was the most unforgettable and horrible memory his ears had ever gathered in.

  It was a thud like the stamping of a horse hoof, a crunch like someone breaking buffalo bones to get the marrow, a squish like a rawhide moccasin plunging into a mud hole. The sound came once, twice, then several more times, from more than one place, some nearer, some farther away. Rising in the dark of night and scrambling through underbrush to identify the strange sound, young Jean caught a glimpse of Minime standing with an axe in his hand, looking down. At Minime’s feet lay the body of La Salle’s nephew, Moranget, his head crushed in and bloody, brains and gore oozing onto the dirt. A quick glance around camp revealed the dead bodies of the other Loyals, Tesier and Saget, their heads also crushed by axes. Casaubon and the German Malcontent, Hein, were joining Minime, and celebrating their atrocity. Each carried a bloody axe.

  Jean grabbed his bundle of possessions and fled into the timber along the river. That next day, he went hungry and watched from the timber. He saw the mutineers force Goupil to drag the corpses somewhere. He saw Casaubon leave for La Salle’s camp, then return. He saw some sort of preparations being made by the excited murderers.

  He was watching some eagles in the sky, attracted, no doubt, by the carrion smell of the buffalo kill, when he heard the shot. An eagle cartwheeled from the sky, its wing shattered. Glancing downstream, whence he had heard the shot, Jean saw La Salle coming on foot, black smoke still streaming from the muzzle of his musket. The jaunty explorer was virtually strutting, watching the eagle fall as he unknowingly approached the camp of the murderous Malcontents.

  Jean spied Minime at the edge of the camp, gesturing idiotically to La Salle in one of his provocative mimes, twitching like a marionette at the mercy of some demented puppeteer. Near Minime, he saw another Malcontent—which he could not tell—crouching in some bushes, aiming a musket toward La Salle.

  Now, farther down the river bank, between Minime and La Salle, Jean saw his friend Goupil step from some bushes where only Jean and La Salle could see him. Realizing that Goupil was risking his life in order to warn La Salle, Jean made up his mind to join the mapmaker in aiding La Salle and the Loyals.

  Goupil cupped his hands around his mouth to shout, but the sound of the river overwhelmed any cry he might have made. Jean gathered himself to leap from the timber and wave at La Salle, but noticed that Goupil seemed suddenly paralyzed, staring at the ground. Was he grinning? The mapmaker’s head twisted, and Jean saw his face, horribly distorted like that of a hanged man.

  A shot erupted from the camp of the Malcontents. La Salle’s head jerked back, and the explorer collapsed about the same time as Goupil—one dead, the other in the grips of the falling sickness.

  Looking back on it, it seemed that the fit actually saved Goupil’s life here, for if the Malcontents had seen him trying to warn La Salle, they certainly would have murdered the mapmaker, too. It was years before Jean heard what had become of Goupil after that murderous incident on the River of Canoes. First, came his life with the Raccoon-Eyed People.

  He fled upstream after the murder of La Salle, and saw places no white man had ever seen before him. He came to a village of neat thatched huts, some of which stood on platforms head-high off the ground. It was a frightening thing to walk into this village alone, for Jean thought he might be tortured or eaten.

  The first warriors who saw him walking into the village shouted and threw dirt in the air, which later Jean would learn was an invitation to do battle. He made no menacing moves, trying to behave with the elan he had seen La Salle exhibit in entering the villages of strange natives.

  At length he was approached, touched, embraced, and adorned with necklaces of shells and claws. The contents of his pack were of high interest to the Raccoon-Eyed People, particularly his strike-a-light, which shot sparks when struck by a flint.

  He was given a place to sleep in one of the huts, on a bed of buffalo robes behind a curtain of deerskin. He ate with the people of this hut, learned from them. He was treated as a member of this family and seemed to be held in highest veneration by everyone in the village. Apparently, the Raccoon-Eyed People felt that to touch Jean’s pale skin assured good luck. He was given a name and made to understand that the name meant stranger.

  He tried to ask about the Spaniards in the west, but the Raccoon-Eyed People did not understand. When summer came, and Jean had been among these people for months, and had been happier with them than he had been since leaving Petit-Goave, he began to think he would live among them the rest of his life and never see another European. As everyone his age and older in this village was tattooed—men and women—Jean asked if he might earn his own tattoos.

  An elaborate ceremony followed, lasting several
days. Jean was lectured by elder warriors and medicine men, though he understood very little of the language of the Raccoon-Eyed People. There were dances and feasts. He was made to sweat and fast. He was given a red bean of some sort that made him sick and gave him fantastic visions of wild animals who spoke to him in a mixture of French and Indian dialects. The spirit-animals told him that the Great Creator of the Raccoon-Eyed People was the same as his God, and that God did not begrudge him praying to native spirits, so long as his prayers were for good and in opposition to evil. When Jean asked the spirits about his friends, Father Membre and Goupil, the spirits told him that he must trust the Great Creator to watch over them, for he would not see them again until the afterlife.

  He awoke from this vision feeling very refreshed and relieved, though weak. Never again would he think of another nation of human beings as savages, as his friend Goupil had so often referred to these non-Christians. The vision he had received during his trance would forever change his idea of life, and whatever lay beyond. He was taken to a shaman who began the process of tattooing, which lasted for days and was accompanied by much prayer and smoke and chanting. The shaman would prick his skin with sharpened pieces of bone and rub powdered charcoal into the tiny wounds, eventually creating the raccoonlike mask that identified the people of this nation.

  Soon, Jean understood that he was considered a medicine man himself, as sick or injured people began to come to him, seeking cures. He treated them with a combination of techniques he had seen La Salle and Minime use. La Salle had been something of an accomplished wilderness surgeon and physician. Minime, on the other hand, had used superstition to induce cures in his patients, blowing on them or making the sign of the cross over them, but such nonsensical treatments had only produced wonderful effects because of the natives’ confidence in magic. By combining what little he knew of cures and treatments with the charlatan flourishes that so impressed the natives, Jean gradually became a noted healer.

  The culture of the Raccoon-Eyed People was confusing, and indeed made Jean feel that he lived up to his name of Stranger. It seemed that everyone in the village was everyone else’s brother or sister or mother or father. Sometimes a person would claim two or more mothers, and would refer to some of them as “greater mother” or “lesser mother.” At length, Jean figured out that the people considered their cousins as brothers or sisters. Their mothers’ sisters were also considered mothers. The fathers’ brothers were considered fathers. A mother’s older sister was called “greater mother” and her younger sister, “lesser mother.”

  He never did get the theology of the Raccoon-Eyed People completely figured out, and doubted that any of them did either. There was a great creator called Man-Never-Known-on-Earth who was invoked in prayers often sent up on clouds of smoke. The North Star was a fearsome spirit called the Light-Which-Stands-Still. There were goddesses of water and moonlight. The wind was sometimes a spirit unto itself, but sometimes merely the breath of the goddess, Mother Earth. It seemed to Jean that every living and nonliving thing or power or mystery was a god or goddess or spirit of some land, benevolent or evil.

  For all the mysteries of the Raccoon-Eyed People’s faith, however, Jean found their earthly existence simple and enjoyable. The men occasionally went off to do battle with enemies. Jean was never asked to join a war party, nor was he ridiculed for not participating, but he thought he might go some time as a healer and spiritual leader. Men of his village were seldom killed in battle, but wounds were common enough and desired by most of the warriors. When their husbands were away at war, wives would walk around in tattered dresses, refusing to bathe. But when their husbands returned, these women were treated to lavish ceremonial baths by other women and dressed in finery.

  Every now and then a war party would bring back a scalp or two, or a horse the warriors had captured. The horses usually came from enemies in the south and west. Once, a warrior came riding home on a horse with a Spanish brand, and Jean wondered how far this horse could possibly have traveled. Moments like these—vague brushes with the civilizations of the Old World—prevented him from forgetting the ways he had left behind, and he would go off alone somewhere and whisper to himself in French all day.

  The few horses the Raccoon-Eyed People captured in battle were helpful in hauling buffalo meat, which supplemented the crops of corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, and melons. They seeded these crops in holes poked into the ground with sticks. They pulled weeds and grass away from the plants they grew and enjoyed rich harvests.

  The women and girls did all this work, and Jean was never made to do anything. He asked one of the elderly men to make him a bow and some arrows, however, and asked some warriors his age to teach him how to shoot. After mastering the basics of archery, Jean spent much of his time hunting small game. The first time he brought a dead deer home to the people of his hut, they carried on as if he had slain enough meat for a year, and a great feast commenced that lasted three days, and entirely depleted the village’s reserve of meat.

  By this time, Jean had long since learned that the huts which stood on stilts were occupied by unmarried girls. The girls entered through a ladder that led to the floor. At night, the mothers of the girls would remove the ladders, so boys could not get at the girls. The women of the Raccoon-Eyed People prided themselves on their chastity, even if the younger girls did not. And some of the girls most certainly did not.

  It was no great feat for a young warrior to crawl into one of the huts on stilts in the middle of the night, even without a ladder. It was no more difficult for a nimble girl to drop out of her hut on the way to some prearranged tryst One such girl, named Starlight, persuaded Jean to join her in such a meeting on the second night of the great feast brought on by his first deer kill.

  The idea of meeting Starlight terrified Jean, especially after the perverse and confusing scenes he had witnessed at Fort St. Louis, but his heart and loins urged him to make the rendezvous. Starlight was waiting for him in the moon shadows by the river. She was so gentle and warm and soft and willing that Jean felt his eagerness for her overwhelm his dread. Her hands were like spirit-creatures that roamed his body and gave pleasure. Her mouth was soft and wet and warm. Her bare breasts pressed against him like goddesses unto themselves. Her thighs and hips and all her mysterious inner reaches took him away from the whole bizarre world, if only for a time.

  Afterward, he spoke to her romantically in French as they lay naked on the robe she had brought, and Starlight giggled girlishly at Stranger’s gibberish. Soon after this night, Starlight was married to one of the most promising young warriors in the village and would not speak to Jean, nor even look at him. At times likes these, Jean was painfully aware of his own whiteness, no matter how thoroughly the Raccoon-Eyed People had adopted him.

  One day a council was held, and Jean sat in the circle with the others to hear the elders speak. He was understanding more of the language now, and gathered rather quickly that the council had been called in order to arrange a trading expedition to the north. The destination was a place called Quivira.

  Quivira! The name rang in Jean’s memory like the knell of hope. In his old home, the pirate town of Petit-Goave, he had known turncoats from several nations. Many were Spaniards who had deserted the Spanish Armada to become freebooters. These Spaniards delighted in telling legends of the fabled land of Quivira.

  Only a couple of priests, they claimed, had been to Quivira, but the tales of riches these priests had brought back to Mexico City exceeded anything the conquistadors had ever encountered, even among the Aztecs or the Incas. The Quivirans possessed ingots of gold and silver that they used as skipping stones upon the waters of a vast inland sea. Their children played games with pearls. Rivulets of quicksilver ran like springs of fresh water. Jewels and gemstones were swept aside like so much rubble.

  Excited more by the prospect of finding Spanish explorers than treasures, Jean joined the trading expedition and traveled north to Quivira. After eighteen days of walking a
cross wooded hills and beautiful open plains, his party approached a village that looked much like the one he had left, except that it was surrounded by many hide tents of other nations. When they arrived, Jean’s people were greeted with great fanfare by many tattooed Raccoon-Eyed People.

  “Is this Quivira?” Jean asked a friend.

  “Yes. It is the richest place under the sun!”

  Jean found no gold nor silver nor jewels, but there was much food in Quivira: fresh meat, dried meat, corn, beans, squash, grapes, plums, pumpkins, wild roots, seeds, honey, tallow, bear fat. And trade goods! Robes, furs, and hides of buffalo, elk, deer, sheep, pronghorn, bear, mink, beaver, otter, rabbit. There were more horses than Jean had seen in one place since entering the wilderness. There were seashells and elk teeth and bear claws, buffalo horns and deer antlers, ropes made of rawhide or corded plant fibers, mats made of pumpkin fibers, pipes made of red stone. Tobacco. Medicinal herbs. Lodge poles so green that they still oozed sap.

  Traders from strange nations mingled. Jean was able to group some of them by their tattoos or their paint or the way they braided their hair or wore their skins. The commotion of all these people was unlike anything he had ever seen. A dozen different languages drifted among the lodges, and everywhere men gesticulated in the hand talk that allowed traders of different nations to communicate.

  Though many warriors went about armed, and some eyed others suspiciously, it was obvious that Quivira was a place of truce. Jean witnessed several instances of captives being sold as slaves or ransomed back to their rightful peoples. Most had been reduced to skin and bones, and many had sores, bruises, and burns on their bodies from being mistreated. Jean’s heart sank at the condition of these unfortunates, but the natives around him showed little pity for the captives. Even when they had been ransomed back to the nations of their birth, the former slaves were not embraced by their people, but rather were scorned as if the shame was theirs for having submitted to capture.