The chief seemed to be explaining the situation to his people, making frequent gestures with his spear toward the direction indicated by his caplive. There was a babel of excited talk then. Finally, the chief told them to shut up. During this Kickaha had been counting the tribe. Including the scouts, there were about ninety. Thirty men, forty women, and twenty children.
The latter ranged from several babes in arms to preadolescents. The women, like the men were black-or brown-haired. The general eye color was a light brown. Some had hazel; a few, blue eyes. Some of the women weren’t bad-looking. They wore only short kilts of tanned leather. The children were naked and, like their elders, dirty. All stank as if they’d been bathless for a month or so.
Some of the beasts of burden, however, carried big water skins of water. A woman milked a cow during the brief stop.
The travois, in addition to the piles of skins, weapons, carried a form of pemmican. There were no tents, which meant that when it rained the tribe just endured it.
While several men pointed spears at him, he was stripped by others. The chief was given the ragged levis and worn boots. From his expression and the tones of his voice, he had never seen anything like them before. When he tried to put on the levis, he found that his wide buttocks and bulging paunch would not accommodate them. He solved this problem by slitting them with the knife around the waist. The boots were too large for his feet, but he wore them anyway.
Finding the package of poison darts in the rear pocket of the levis, he passed them out to men whose spears lacked flint or chert tips. These tied the darts on the ends with rawhide cords and then had a good time play-jabbing at each other, laughing as they leaped away.
The only possessions left to Kickaha were his holey and dirty jockey shorts.
A big female moosoid was pulled out from the herd, fitted with reins and a saddle, and Kickaha was urged to mount it. He did so, holding the reins in his hands. The chief then said something, and a man tied the ends of a long thong under the beast’s belly to Kickaha’s ankles. The caravan started up then, an old woman-the only old person he saw-blowing a strange tune on a flute made from a long bone. Probably it was the legbone of a moa.
The ride lasted about an hour. Then the tribe camped-if you call such a simple quick procedure camping-by the channel. While Kickaha sat on the animal, ignored by everybody except a single guard, the people took their turn bathing.
Kickaha wondered if they meant to keep him on the moosoid until they moved on. After half an hour, during which time he was savagely bitten by a horde of blue flies, his guard decided to untie the leg thongs. Kickaha got down stiffly and waited. The guard leaned on his spear waiting until he was relieved to take a bath.
Kickaha gestured that he would like a drink of water. The guard, a slim youth, nodded. Kickaha went to the edge of the channel and got down on his knees to scoop up water with his hands. The next moment, he was in the water, propelled by a kick on his buttocks.
He came up to find everybody laughing at this splendid joke.
Kickaha swam forward until his feet touched the bottom. He turned around and cast one longing glance at the other side. It lay about three hundred feet away. He could get over to the opposite shore even with his hands tied before him. His pursuers could swim or ride across on swimming beasts. But he could beat them. If only there had been a wood nearby or a mountain, he would have tried for escape. However, there was a plain about two miles broad there. His captors would ride him down before he got to it.
Reluctantly, he hauled himself onto the bank. He stood up, looking expressionlessly at the youth. That one laughed and said something to the others, and they broke into uproarious laughter. Whatever it was he said, it wasn’t complimentary to the prisoner.