Hush trudged along, his throbbing jaw strapped to his skull by Bundle, Insane Woman of the Enemy, rescuer of the last baby of his father's slain tribe. The baby was not carried on the crazy woman's back, but bundled in feathered scalplocks collected from the battlefield, adorned like a little woman war chief, cloaked in the mat of woven scalps that had once adorned father's ancestral war hat. This nightmare of war kills—this record of death reaching back to the time when Fierce Woman mounted Grandfather when he lay wounded on the Crab Feast Bank above the Shell-fish-water—was held in place like a great bear robe by three medicine bundles pilfered from among the medicine men the enemy had brought along, and who had died in those terrible moments however long ago the battle was.
Hush was confused, groggy, irritable.
He trudged on, encouraged by the woman who sometimes held the baby before him and talked for it. She was only quiet when she nursed.
He stumbled and fell coming over Winter Rise into the Planting Valley and looked up to see the baby hovering over him, looking down into his face, smiling, as the crazy woman ranted, "The Baby says, 'Rise!' The baby says, 'Be strong, warrior!'"
The woman, though she had tended him well and faithfully and insisted she was his adopted sister now, made things no less confused, as she walked along beside him, holding the baby before her and speaking incessantly.
As they passed through the snow-crusted maize mounds of a long-abandoned settlement of the Wild-Goose-River People, the Crazy Woman held the baby out and looked into its eyes and chattered, "My Baby will have maize aplenty, slaves to harvest it, subservient wives to prepare it, as she sits next to her white chief in his wooden white-man seat and counts his moon metal wampum. My Baby shall never poke a stick in the earth for the Whiteman or be told, 'Go here like a dog,' 'Sneak their like a fox,' 'Wait for the Whiteman's house boat like a dumb cub.'
"No!, War Baby, Bride of Battle, warriors of all nations shall pile scalps at your feet, bring young girls taken captive to do your chores."
I would so enjoy killing this insane bitch where she stands!
Bundle, Crazy Woman of the Enemy, then stopped and glared at him and let the blaze in her eyes dissolve into a sulking hurt, and then held the baby girl up and spoke to it, "Your mean Uncle, my ungrateful brother, does not appreciate us—no he doesn't! But he shall see that he is wrong to want to strike us. Does this make War Baby, Bride of Battle sad? No, for she is made of tougher stuff than her poor weeping mother who must suffer the sullen threats of her ungrateful—"
"Arrrgh!" he screamed, his throbbing jaw bursting the rabbit fur settings, his swollen fists striking at the sky, his broken teeth scratching the base of his tongue, the pain from his broken jaw driving through the base of his skull as he screamed, "Enough, bitch!"
His voice then came in a grisly slather as he loomed over her, and she held the baby over her head like some elder judging from above, "I'd rather have an ugly old wife than a yammering big sister. Lay the baby aside while I take you!"
Her eyes shone big and deep brown against the snow as she arranged a little shelter out of her things for the Baby. No sooner was she done then she turned and snarled at him, and he wiped that catlike expression from her face with the back of his hand. She struggled but feebly as he tore her buckskins in half with his aching hands and then drove her into the snow between the maize humps. Her struggling soon turned to holding him close as he tried his best to hurt her and she accepted this cruel attention with an accepting embrace laced with pitiful rabbit-dying squeaks.
He rose from her sprawled and subdued form, her body fortunately not as ugly as her face, rearranged his loincloth, and felt somewhat human now. He turned to look at her and saw that she was smiling with glowing approval. As she extended her arms asking for him to lay down and embrace her he barked, "Keep your mouth shut, woman, and you might have your legs opened as often as is practical. I'll not have an arrow planted in my back mounting you—so don't get to nagging for it."
She then batted her eye lids and bit her lips, rolling her eyes like she had eaten the wrong mushrooms, got obediently to her feet, picked up the baby, coddled it like a normal child, and then fell in behind him. No sooner were they to Beautiful Autumn Hill, then he caught her whispering to the baby behind him. He stopped, tying to make sense of her softly whispered words. Then she changed her tone so he could hear and said, "No more questions on the trace, Baby, we will speak of how wonderful your uncle is once he has gotten us safely into a camp."
Is she insane? Does the baby really speak to her with its eyes? Or has she simply caught a husband in some weird woman's net?
Never mind, when she irks me I shall rape her and when she irks me further I shall kill some man, and tell him, "I could have made you take my nagging wife and marry her yourself, but have instead sent you to your grandfathers to dwell in peaceful memory."
On they walked, into the rising sun, down over Beautiful Autumn Hill, the last survivors of the tribe that was born in battle on this very spot, in the time of their grandfathers.
