Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson
"Two or three hours at the most. Probably less."
Naduah fought down her panic. Why didn't they move? Why didn't they do something? This was only a temporary camp, a place to spend the night. It wouldn't take long to pack up. The horses were tethered nearby among some cottonwoods where they were grazing on the thick buffalo grass. The grass was dry and withered, but it had cured where it stood and it was still nourishing. It was also perfect fuel for a prairie fire.
Naduah wanted to scream at her mother and grandmother, to make them move, do something. She wanted to run blindly like the buffalo and throw herself off the cliff, into the cold, safe water fifty feet below. And onto the rocks, she reminded herself. At least she could run down the trail and get into the water and save herself. And leave all her family's belongings and the children and the sick and her pony.
Every muscle in her body tensed as she forced herself to wait until her grandmother had finished weighing all the aspects of the situation. When Medicine Woman finished, she came to the right decision, as she always did. She disappeared into the lodge and came out with the big buffalo rib they used as a shovel, and two sharp root-digging sticks. She handed the sticks to Takes Down and Naduah while Black Bird and Star Name ran to get digging tools of their own. Naduah took time to tie Smoke and Dog inside the lodge before running after the women.
Medicine Woman had broken into a trot, and women and girls joined her as she headed for the edge of camp. She shouted instructions as she ran. She sent women in a wide arc around the camp and set them to turning the ground over, clearing a swath in the grass. The boys had already headed for the pasture to bring in the best ponies. As they drove them into the center of the camp, those left behind, smelling the fire now, cried pitifully and pulled at their tethers.
"Upstream!" Naduah called to him as he went by with their family's horses. "Tie Wind and Rabbit Ears inside the lodge."
"They won't fit."
"Cut the door. Please, Upstream."
"All right." He had to yell to be heard over the din of horses and dogs, the men shouting orders and the women calling to their younger children.
A line of men and older boys formed at the top of the cliff, lowering buckets and kettles and buffalo pauches to men waiting at the river below. They filled the containers as they were lowered, tied them to the lines to be hauled back up. Then the water was passed from hand to hand and thrown onto the outer lodges, wetting them as much as possible.
Everyone strong enough to walk joined Medicine Woman's crew, forming a huge semicircle around the camp, stopping at the river bluff on each side. Desperately they pulled grass and threw it onto the prairie beyond. They dug at the tough roots with anything they could use as a shovel, some kneeling and stabbing at it with their knives. A few of the older men carefully lit fires to burn off the area being cleared, widening it and taking care of grass that had been missed.
Some of those with lodges at the perimeter of camp began pulling them down and dragging them into the open space near Pahayuca's tent. But there were too many lodges to dismantle them all, and the People would need many of them for shelter from the heat. As the sun rose Naduah could see her breath in the cold air, but sweat rolled into her eyes.
Her fingers were cut and sore and her fingernails broken off at the quick. Dirt had been forced under them until they bled and sent pain into her hands. Still she doggedly grabbed, pulled, and pitched, straining to dislodge the stubborn roots of the buffalo grass, roots that formed a solid, woven mass. She glanced over her shoulder now and then to check the progress of the fire. The flames were clearly visible, licking the sky and seeming to stain it with their own color as they marched closer.
The game that had eluded them for months began trickling into camp. Then the trickle became a flood. The faster animals, the deer and the pronghorns, arrived first, many of them racing through camp and over the edge of the cliff in their terror. Naduah was glad she had asked Upstream to tie Wind inside the lodge, or she probably would have broken free to join the stampede. As it was, the lodge was quivering as the four animals pulled and reared.
Jackass rabbits bounded after the deer, bouncing crazily, as though wound with steel springs. Their long legs were a churning blur when they hit the ground. A huge red wolf, his tongue flinging saliva as he ran, almost knocked Naduah down. More wolves passed her, and coyotes and badgers. The skunks began waddling by, their thick, silky pelts rippling with their rolling gait. The animals poured through camp, then turned and raced along the bluff in both directions.
Naduah was concentrating so intently on the grass she was pulling that she jumped and screamed when a seven-foot diamondback rattlesnake skimmed across her foot. Other snakes began streaming in like living rivulets of water: short vicious copperheads, rippling sidewinders, more of the beautiful diamondbacks, slender, iridescent racers and whip snakes. They slithered into every possible crevice in the folded gear and bedding.
Flakes of soot and wisps of smoke were blowing around Naduah's head when the lizards arrived. Brown and yellow and orange and blue and green. Scaled and horned, twilled and spotted and striped and checked. Rough and glossy, they skittered through the grass and over the stones until the ground seemed alive, moving and shifting. Long, plump, bright green collared lizards ran by, upright on their hind legs. Their mouths gaped and hissed in their big heads, and they clutched their short front legs to. their chests like tiny dinosaurs.
The insects and the spiders were the last to arrive. Wasps and bees and beetles swarmed, their hard little bodies stinging as they hit Naduah's skin. There were hairy black tarantulas and huge bristling wolf spiders, each with eight eyes glowing as red as coals from hell. Many of them were as big as small birds. Daddy longlegs lurched by in lacy carpets, their legs a tangle of threadlike stilts. Worst of all were the scorpions, their evil, spiked tails curved and ready over their backs. Like a relentless army they advanced over the fallen, heaving bodies of animals unable to run any farther.
Black smoke rolled over them now, stinging Naduah's nose and eyes and setting everyone to coughing. Naduah felt as though her mouth were full of cottonwood fluff, and she could feel the heat intensifying. She gasped for air, sucking in each breath and wondering if there would be a next one. Still they worked on as the roar and crackle grew deafening in their ears, and the flames loomed over them like a thirty-foot wave about to break.
Fifty yards away, a fallen rabbit screamed as the fire engulfed and shriveled it. The flames stretched as far as the eye could see. They seemed to be consuming the entire world, eating it from the edges inward, coming closer and closer to the helpless village. Naduah knew they could never survive it. The thin, cleared area looked pitiful, like a thread stretched between them and the inferno.
The line of people moved back, their heavy winter moccasins crunching on the hard bodies of the spiders and insects and lizards that crawled around them. The last of the birds had flown overhead a while before. Naduah watched them go, wishing she could fly above the smoke and flames. Still she and the others hacked and chopped desperately, shielding their faces with their free arms, trying to protect themselves from the whirling soot and smoke and cinders.
The outer lodges were emptied, the well supporting or carrying the sick, mothers swinging their babies in their cradle boards. The circle of diggers finally had to give up. They dropped their sticks and ran from the intense heat. As they ran they grabbed as much as they could carry from the outer tents, taking their own or their neighbors' belongings with them. Medicine Woman was the last to give up, and she fell as she ran, her foot caught in an abandoned prairie-dog hole. When she pulled it out, it jutted at a strange angle from the ankle.
"Grandmother!" Naduah screamed and darted back to her, the fire towering over them both. Flames jostled at the edge of the cleared area, as though searching for the best place to jump it. Buffalo Piss appeared from the smoke, his young face smudged with soot. He and Naduah pulled Medicine Woman, already flaming like a living torch, away from
She seemed dead, but as Naduah lay sobbing across her, she felt the old woman's heart beating. It reminded her of her first day in camp when Medicine Woman had put the child's hand on her chest and she had felt the delicate fluttering.
Buffalo Piss pulled her gently off as Pahayuca came running. He picked his sister up as though she weighed nothing, and Naduah and Takes Down followed him to see that she was safely laid in his lodge near the cliff face. He knew that Sunrise was away and that Takes Down and Black Bird would have all they could do to save themselves, much less look after Medicine Woman.
Small fires began flaring all around them as sparks landed on the lodges. They burned neat round holes whose edges burst into flames, like delicate petals opening. The roaring was that of an immense waterfall. Everyone who could grabbed a blanket or robe, shaking the snakes and lizards and spiders out of them. Naduah beat at fires until her arms felt like wooden clubs. Yet still the flowers bloomed, burning entire lodges and consuming more of the precious food supply. The heat was suffocating, and she gasped for breath. Several children lay unmoving, their mothers sobbing as they beat at the blaze.
Horses screamed, bucking and rearing in blind panic. Many of them pulled loose and veered off through the smoke and into the flames, or over the cliffs edge, trampling children in their flight. Past the cleared circle, in the grove of cottonwoods, the abandoned ponies shrieked as they were roasted alive. It seemed as though the fire was eating the air as well as the lodges and the food and the horses. The heat burned Naduah's nose and throat and cracked her parched lips. She couldn't cry anymore because her tear ducts had dried, and the linings of her eyes seemed to scrape against her eyeballs.
The world turned to blinding orange heat. Naduah staggered and fell, with blackness coming down on her like a heavy blanket. She waved her hand feebly, as though to push it away, then gave up. Before she passed out, she managed to pull a robe over her. That was all the preparation for death she could make.
Naduah awoke to a hissing of snakes, thousands of them. As she threw off the robe and sat up, she realized that two snakes had been sharing it with her, their bodies cool along hers. They slithered off in search of other shelter, their tongues flickering. Snow was falling, the flakes turning to tiny hissing points of steam as they hit the flames. She held her tongue out to catch the flakes, tantalizing with the hint of water.
Fire still burned in a circle around the devastated camp, but it was less ferocious. It had reached the bluff on either side of the cleared area and was dying from lack of fuel, sputtering angrily. As the snow fell more heavily, it beat the flames down.
From around Naduah came the moans and sobs of the survivors as they searched through the wreckage for whatever they could salvage. Their faces were blackened with soot. Pahayuca and the men of the council sat in the middle of camp. They huddled under their robes as they decided where to go from there. As far as the steel-gray horizon all Naduah could see was a smoking, blackened wasteland, broken only by a few ragged spikes of tree trunks and the charred lumps of dead animals, most of them too burned to eat. Snow was beginning to blow in thin sheets, piling up around the corpses and laying a cover over them.
Takes Down passed, swinging a dead rabbit by the ears and carrying a kettle of water in the other hand. She squatted next to Naduah and brushed the hair from her eyes. It was what she always did, showing her affection in her shy way.
"Are you hurt, Daughter?"
"I don't think so."
"Drink." Takes Down dropped the rabbit and scooped water from the kettle. Naduah drank from her hands. Then she reached in and splashed a little on her face.
"Medicine Woman is asking for you, Naduah. She says to bring her medicine bag when you come. I'll be gathering as many animals as I can to eat later."
"I'll go now, Mother."
Takes Down walked to their lodge, laid the rabbit down outside, and began carrying water to those who were hurt. Women were killing whatever animals they could find still hiding in camp, but there was little wood left to build cooking fires. As the ground cooled under the snow, some of them went beyond the village, searching among the larger animals for those with edible meat on them. The blackened carcasses of their own ponies and mules had the most. As the snow dampened the ground, the smell of wet charcoal pervaded everything.
Naduah shivered as she stood up. Less than an hour after she had thought she would never be cold again, she was shivering. Her robe and dress had black holes in them, and the wind seemed to blow through to her bones. She heard Wind's shrill neigh, and went to her lodge. It was crowded inside with two horses and the pronghorn and Dog, and all the animals were frightened. Crouched against the packs at the far wall was a large, buff-colored coyote, who stared at Smoke as though trying to mesmerize her. Now that the danger was over he was interested in his stomach. Smoke had backed the length of her tether and tugged at it desperately. Dog cowered in the bedding, whining softly.
When he saw Naduah, the coyote got up and stretched slowly and regally. He strolled across the tent, brushing against her as he left. She let him go, just as anyone else would. Coyotes were sacred. Not as sacred as wolves, perhaps, but brothers to the People anyway. No one would desecrate them by eating them.
Naduah stroked the trembling pronghorn, the thick brittle winter coat coming out in tufts under her hand. Smoke only weighed a hundred pounds, but perhaps a dog travois could be hitched to her. Wind would have to suffer the humiliation of serving as a pack animal too. Too many horses had perished to allow any of those left to go unused. She lifted her grandmother's medicine pouch down from its peg and collected rags and a bag of bear fat to take with her. Then she untied Smoke and Dog, and they trotted behind her as she ran toward Pahayuca's lodge.
Medicine Woman lay on a pile of robes, and only Something Good was with her, crooning softly as she glided around putting things into packs and sorting through the jumble in the tent. Outside, Blocks The Sun and Silver Rain were converting a travois into a stretcher. They lashed several crosspieces to the two long, scissor-shaped poles, then laid a thick pile of the softest robes on top. They covered the robes with an old hide to keep the snow off. Then they tied a curved willow lathe across the center to arch over Medicine Woman's body and hold her in place, no matter how rough the traveling might be.
Naduah mixed crumbled dried tree fungus with the warm bear grease. The fungus deadened pain and was used for burns and toothaches. Medicine Woman's hair had been singed off close to her head and gave off an acrid odor. She was naked under the fur robe. Naduah knelt beside her and gently rubbed the grease mixture over her face and neck and ears, covering the blisters and peeling skin that was blackened in places.
"Is the pain bad, Grandmother?" Medicine Woman's eyelids fluttered and opened, but the eyes were glazed and unseeing.
"Yes, little one. You must have my pouch."
"Yes, Kaku."
"Good. You know what to use. The fungus seems to be helping."
"I had a good teacher." Naduah's tears fell onto the fur. She wanted to tell Medicine Woman that she would be all right. But she couldn't. Medicine Woman had never lied to her, even when the truth was painful. Naduah's grandmother reached out a thin, blue-veined hand and groped with it until she touched her granddaughter's cheek.
"Don't cry for me, little one. I've seen the world. Sight is only one way of seeing. There are others. I can still see in my memory. And you can describe things to me."
Naduah couldn't answer, and she busied herself with the tiny bags and bundles of leaves in the medicine pouch. She sat back on her heels, studying the contents and deciding what herbs to use. She could ask her grandmother, but she felt as though this should be her responsibility, that she shouldn't bother Medicine Woman and make her speak unnecessarily.
"Little one."
"Yes, Something Good." In her preoccupation, Naduah had almost forgotten her friend was there.
"Hurry. Pahayuca and the council have decided where we will travel. Lance is riding through now with instructions. We have to leave soon. The snow is falling heavily."
Naduah raised her head and concentrated. Above the moans and cries of grief and the clatter of lodge poles falling, she could hear Lance's singsong chant.
The Wasps moved out in the teeth of the blizzard, with lines tied between each horse and walker to keep them all together. Pahayuca used the wind as a reference point, keeping it always on his right cheek as he headed slightly southeast, away from the precipitous river bluff, now invisible in the swirling clouds of white. The band followed the council's decision without question. They all knew that to stay where they were, snowed in miles from forage or game, would mean death for them all. Their only chance was to keep moving.
In good times the average family had at least five pack animals, five riding ponies, and two buffalo or war ponies. Now there weren't enough for everyone to ride, and many walked, taking turns on a friend's or relative's horse when they became exhausted. The children and the sick and hurt rode on travois like Medicine Woman's, spattered with the dark gray mud of mixed snow and soot. Behind them the abandoned wreckage was soon lost in the snow. The whitened lodge poles and tattered covers looked like the chewed bones of a mangled animal, left for the vultures to pick clean. Hanging from the highest pole still standing was a pouch with a piece of painted bark inside, a message for the missing hunters.
Naduah's fingers were red and stinging where they poked out of the wrapping of blanket strips. Her face was numb, and there was frost peeling from it. She could hardly feel her feet at all, except for the steady, throbbing pain. In front of her, Takes Down was an indistinct form, fading in and out of sight on Rabbit Ears. A dark form loomed through the white curtain and a figure trudged toward her, headed back the way they had come.