Little Big Man

Across he staggered, and Katy knowed it was for her and started to appeal in Dutch, but as after a bit it was clear he didn’t mean to kill her, or not anyway until he had his pleasure, she went down on the ground slowly as if melted by the sun, and Hump ripped at the gingham and stuffs beneath until he laid her thick flanks bare, pressing his swarthiness between them, him all dirt, blood, and sweat and coughing like a mule. Dutch Katy, like all her countrymen, had always been a maniac for keeping clean. She used to wash at every stop, going in the river while wearing a loose dress for modesty, and had had some close escapes from the quicksand of which the Platte was full. I remember once they had to throw a line over her and draw her out by ox.

This event touched off a general movement by the Cheyenne towards our women, and since there was more of the former than the latter, again the strife began which had so lately ended over the whiskey, and again Indian felled Indian, but enough was left to mount the widows of Troy and Clairmont, and the Jackson sisters—and if you think there was outcry on the part of the victims, you are wrong; while those who were not raped stood watching those who were as if waiting their own turn, their children clustered around them.

Now Caroline at last woke up when Spotted Wolf come towards my mother. She shouted at Old Lodge Skins, who simply grinned in answer. My fifteen-year-old brother Bill, and Tom who was twelve, they broke and run under the wagon, among the buckets hanging there.

That left me, with my wet pants, and my sisters Sue Ann, thirteen, and Margaret, eleven, and we was hugging Ma.

Caroline tried once again to get the chief’s intervention, but it’s likely that he never knew what she wanted and it’s sure he could have done nothing if he had, and the shadow of Spotted Wolf, an enormous Indian, was already across us and we could smell his stink. My Ma was praying in a low moan. I looked up and saw the Cheyenne’s face, which was not wearing what you generally think of as a cruel or indecent expression but rather one kind of dreamy and genial, like he had every O.K. for his lust.

At that moment the black lash of Caroline’s whip snaked around his throat, drawing up the bear-claw necklace there, and he went over backwards, cracking his head on a rock and didn’t get up.

“You go with the kids to climb in the wagon, Ma,” said Caroline, coolly withdrawing her whip into a big loop. “None of these individuals will trouble you further.” Caroline was completely self-possessed as she said this; she was as arrogant as my Pa.

Old Lodge Skins was pointing at the unconscious body of Spotted Wolf and laughing his guts out. That irked Caroline, but also pleased her, and she flicked her whip sort of flirty at the chief. He flopped onto his back with his arms crucified and laughed his old mouth, dark as a cave full of bats, into the sun. His foot was still bare and his busted gun lay near him like the skeleton of an open umbrella.

Ma did what Caroline said, gathered us kids together, including the two cowards down among the ox dung, and we went into the wagon, where we found room for all of us though there really wasn’t any, what with the furniture, boxes, and bags that represented our worldly goods. Tom’s shoe was in my face, rather nasty considering what he had walked in, and I was wrapped around a barrel now full of crockery but which had once held salt-fish and never lost the aroma, but we was lucky to be alive, so you didn’t hear no complaints.

All afternoon we stayed there; it was like being closed up in a bag lying in the sun, because the junk in the wagon bed cut off the air without insulating any. Outside the noise died away within an hour, and when after midafternoon Bill took nerve to raise the side canvas and peep from under, he reported no one standing within the range of his eye.

We then all shivered at the squeak of somebody climbing into the box out front, but Caroline soon poked her head in through the puckered opening and said: “All quiet, folks. You stay where you are and don’t worry none. I’ll be sitting right here all night.”

Ma whispered: “Can you do anything for your poor Pa, Caroline? What become of him?”

“He is stone-dead,” said Caroline, plenty disgusted, “and all the rest along with him, and I got enough to do right here without keeping the buzzards off them.”

“You know,” said Ma, addressing us all, “if he had had time to learn the Hebrew lingo he would have been all right.”

“Yes, Ma’m,” answered Caroline and withdrew.