Sacajawea Read Online Free PDF Page B

on the rock. She pounded the stick into the joint, trying to snap it off. The rock became red; the stick and her tunic became red with her blood. The cartilage was elastic and stubborn. With a final thrust, the end of her little finger lay on the rock, alone. It was no longer a part of her. It was gone forever. Her grandmother was gone from her forever. Grass Child’s eyes stared at the flow of blood from the stump. Her brain seared with the pain.
    She forced herself to move slowly to the small fire and to bend over it.
    She became aware of the heat on her hand, and still Grass Child could not nerve herself for the final ritual. She turned her face toward the sky. She heard a sound from there, a sound that she knew. The glossy black carrion crows were flying around and around, watching her every move. She moved further over the fire, and with her right hand she pushed her little finger against a glowing stick to stanch the flow of blood. The fire became a small pinpoint of orange, and the darkness fell around her. The cawing of the crows ceased.
    When Grass Child awoke, the fire was cold. She got up too quickly, put her hands to her head, and closed her eyes to steady herself. She went to the water hole and lay down and drank, feeling the cool touch of the water at the pit of her stomach. She got up slowly, keeping her uneasy balance with Mother Earth, and suddenly her stomach tightened like a squeezed water bladder. Holding to a sapling, she hung over it and vomited. Her eyes watered, and she rubbed the tears out. Then she saw a glint of blue in the dry grass. She pulled the familiar smooth stone from the tangled growth. The attached thong swung beneath her throbbing hand. At the edge of the dead fire lay her small leather bag. She wiped at the huckleberry stain inside the bag with the bottom fringe on her tunic. She dropped the sky-blue stone into the bag, picked off the yellow spears of grass entangled with the thin thong, and when it was clean, she stuffed it into the little bag. She tied the drawstring of the bag to the drawstring at the neck of her tunic. She pushed the bag inside the tunic for safekeeping. She could feel the pouch press against her skin. Tears flowed over her face. She took a deep breath and looked to the tops of the mountains that hid the morning sun. It seemed to Grass Child that the tops of the mountains pressed back the fingers of the sun. She shivered. While her face was damp she rubbed cold ashes on her cheeks to indicate that she was in mourning. She looked at her left hand. The small stump was not swollen but the end was black and beginning to scab over with a thick yellow ooze. She picked at a smallblister on a balsam pine, and when the pitch ran out, she gently put the stump in it. She stripped off some alder leaves and pressed them around the wound. It throbbed. For a moment she sat with her eyes shut. Then, gradually, her mind began to clear, and she realized there was still work unfinished.
    She pulled at the loose, thick leather thongs that held the lean-to together. Then she pulled at the corner cottonwood poles. Dragging them from the sagging shelter, she pushed one up across a tree branch barely within her reach. She had a vague picture in mind of a wooden platform on which to place the body of her grandmother, out of reach of the wolves. A decent burial place for one so beloved. She climbed the tree, heedless of scratches, and pulled the pole over to a branch of a neighboring tree of about the same height. Without resting, she did the same with another pole. She used the long thong to tie the robe around her grandmother’s body into a secure bundle. It was awkward work for the girl; she could not count on her left hand. When, finally, she was done, she threw the free end of the thong up into the branches. It took several tries, but finally it rested above the poles. She scrambled up the tree again and pulled the thong down further over the branch. Carefully, slowly, she pulled the