“Grey Feather, I wish we could, but the whites are too strong in the south already. We cannot take soldiers away from our efforts there to help you in the north.”
Grey Feather smiled. “You are young,” he said. “Do you always trade a thing for a similar thing?” Some of the chiefs chuckled at the teasing.
Storm Arriving kept his temper, seeing his error and hoping the chiefs meant no insult. “How is it we might help you?”
Grey Feather ran a finger along the barrel of one of the rifles. “You all have the same weapons, the rifle that can fire many shots without reloading.”
“Yes,” Storm Arriving said, feeling a glimmer of excitement.
“We have only old weapons that the northern whites no longer want. But a weapon like this, it would give one man the power of many.”
“I see. And if one man was like many, then it would take fewer men to protect your lands.” He leaned forward a little, as if asking a favor of the older man. “What if we could get you some weapons like the ones we have?”
The Crow chief looked back across the faces of his fellows. “If you gave us weapons to strengthen our soldiers here,” he said, “we could send others south to you.”
“How many?”
Grey Feather made a wavering gesture with his hand. “For each soldier we send, you must send two rifles.”
“Yes,” Storm Arriving said, “but how many soldiers could you send?”
Grey Feather was surprised at the quick acquiescence to his offer. “As many as you need,” he said with a shrug.
Now it was Storm Arriving who was smiling. “And if I send you a thousand rifles?”
The chiefs were grinning openly. “You could send us two thousand rifles, and we would still fulfill our part.”
They talked for a time longer, discussing details of when and where. Sharp Knife volunteered to stay behind as an ambassador to the Crow People, and as a guide for any southbound troops. The next day, Storm Arriving and the others left for their scheduled rendezvous with Two Roads beyond the Elk River.
Have we done it? he could not help but ask himself. Have we really made peace with the Crow People? With such an alliance, we will be the fiercest army on the plains. The bluecoats will fall like cornstalks before us!
But the agreement of weapons troubled him, and he wondered if he had been a fool. He had walked away with nothing but promises, and the obligation to arm his oldest enemy. A feeling of dread seeped into his heart, a feeling that did not go away as they crossed the Elk River and he saw the face of Two Roads.
“I have news for you,” the Kit Fox chief told him, before he could even tell of the events to the north. “It concerns your wife and sister. They rode off in the night. They have left the People to search for One Who Flies.”
Chapter 9
Light Snow Moon, Waning
Fifty-seven Years after the Star Fell
North of the Sand Hills
Alliance Territory
Mouse Road crouched in the dawn-brewed mist, hiding behind the leathery leaves of a red-heartberry bush, waiting. She breathed slowly, silently, ignoring the cold, the thorns in her calf, and the cramping muscles in her shoulders.
The persistent drizzle that had dogged them for days had finally relented, but still the sky touched the ground, dampening everything. Her clothes stuck to her skin in limp submission and the braids of her hair hung heavy, beaded with glassy gems. Behind her in the copse of oak trees where they had spent the night, life was awakening with the patter of gathered dew and the querulous chattering of songbirds, but ahead of her, the greater world of scrub and sage remained somnolent and torpid, sleeping still beneath the swaddling clouds.
These tiny events, however, did not concern her. Instead, her attention was contained by the small patch of ground before her. In it, several feather-flower plants raised their first bracts of spring, two large elk-heart-berry bushes put forth their early flowers, and sedgegrass gripped tight-footed to the delicate soil. But between the bushes and the tufts of hardy grass there was a length of bare ground, sandy and pale. It was a path—a narrow one, to be sure, but a path nonetheless—and across it was stretched a long loop of sinew-string.
Mouse Road had hidden the bottom of the loop under a dusting of dirt, and the dark-green leaves of the bushes on either side held the loop up and open across the track. Extending from the loop was a length of string, white in the early light, the end of which she held in her hand and which she had held since the first glimmer of light. She had waited for nearly two hands of time, it seemed, the cold sand beneath her, the cold sky atop her, one hand outstretched, holding the end of the snare’s loop.
Her patience, though, was about to bring its benefit.
She heard them coming, had known they would come since she had seen their tracks on the sandy path: prairie chickens, large and plump with feeding on springtime grubs and winter nuts. She heard them clucking and singing oo-loo to one another, heard them scratching in the leaves and grass, searching for bugs in the morning chill. Then she saw one, a hen in her cloak of barred brown. Mouse Road felt her mouth begin to water at the sight.
The two women and baby had been on the trail for nearly a moon—much longer than Mouse Road had thought it would take. But the weather had been harsh, and coming down out of the snows of the northlands had been difficult. By the time they had reached the Antelope Pit River, their supplies had begun to dwindle, and they had been forced to either forage or turn back.
Foraging in wintertime was difficult, and slowed them even more, but both she and her sister-in-law had been sure that it was forward they wanted to go, and not back. So they continued south, and reached the more temperate climes where spring had started to venture. There, they supplemented the last of their dried meat, dried berries, nuts, and roots with fresh curls of fern fronds, nascent tubers of wasp-plants, and fragrant bulbs of skunk-root and elk-mint.
Even with this addition, however, their stores remained dangerously low. The whistlers were hungry, the baby was fretful, and most of their time was spent searching for food, with little spent on making progress toward their southern goal. They were forced to stay close to the wooded lands where traveling was harder but food was more plentiful. It had quickly become clear to them both that they needed to bring in some game, but Speaks While Leaving had little experience with hunting. Now, as Mouse Road lay beneath the thorny branches, she wished that she had spent more time with One Who Flies as he had set his traps during the winter months. While grateful for the tradable furs, pelts, and hides he had procured with his snares and deadfalls, she had never really appreciated the extra meat it had brought into her lodge. Her stomach gurgled at the memory.
The prairie hen was nearing the noose, and Mouse Road gripped her fingers tighter around the thin cord of sinew. Behind the hen strutted the male, his yellow brows bright in the morning light, his two horn-feathers standing tall above his head like rabbit ears. He was wary, and would be harder to catch in the snare, but his larger size meant a larger meal. They cooed to each other, and Mouse Road tried to decide how to spring the trap. The hen would have to pass through the snare if she was to snare the male, provided, of course, that the hen didn’t knock the noose off its leafy hangers. No, it had to be the hen. It was the safest course.
She prepared herself, slowly tensing tired muscles, readying her arm for a quick, smooth snap of the cord.
From deep within the copse of oaks behind her, she heard a voice. Speaks While Leaving was calling for her.
“Mouse Road, look what I’ve found!”
Spirits send her away! she prayed.
The chickens halted, the male stretching his neck up to his full height to see what the sound might be.
“Mouse Road?” She was getting closer. “Where are you?”
The chickens both stared in the direction of the voice. The female was only a hand’s-breadth from the snare. If they ran, Mouse Road knew they might run toward the snare, and kept still.
“I f
ound some yellow shelf-mushrooms,” Speaks While Leaving called out. “And the cache of a pine-mouse, filled with nuts and seeds.”
Her steps grew closer.
The chickens blinked their wax-white eyelids.
“Mouse Road?”
Wings beat the air with feathered thunder as the chickens leapt up and flew away. Mouse Road sagged, tension draining away from every tautened muscle.
“Eya!” she shouted at the earth, and then rolled onto her side. Painfully, she sat up, wincing at the cramps in her back, and saw Speaks While Leaving standing under the trees, her gaze following the chickens, the realization of what she had done all across her face.
“Mouse Road, I am sorry. I was sure you’d have given up by now.”
Mouse Road got to her knees and brushed the dirt from her dress.
“But look,” Speaks While Leaving said, holding out an armful of mustard-yellow mushrooms. “Won’t they be good?” And as she stepped out from under the oak branches, the scrub at her feet erupted.
With a squawking gobble and a huge flurry of wings, a turkey ran out from under a bush and leapt into the air. Its flight was low and right toward Mouse Road, who stood and lunged for it.
The heavy bird tried to turn in flight, but failed and crashed into her face. Mouse Road felt sharp claws against her arms as she grabbed handfuls of feathers. She fell backwards, but took the bird down with her, trying to grab its legs. Her world became a storm of sand, flapping wings, sharp nails, and a stabbing beak. Thorns of the berry bush clawed her. The turkey’s wing clonked her hard on the head, but she was able to grab it.
“Eya!” she shouted. The turkey pecked at her hands as she held its wing, swiveled, and got to her knees. “Help!” she called, and Speaks While Leaving ran in.
“Get it!”
“I’m trying,” but Speaks While Leaving was still holding on to the mushrooms and also still had the cradleboard with Blue Shell Woman strapped to her back. The huge bird flapped and jumped and ran and half-flew, dragging Mouse Road in a widening spiral of panic through the prickly shrubs. It cackled and screamed.
Mouse Road started to laugh. The bird pulled her back down to her knees just as Speaks While Leaving—having left the mushrooms behind—came in again. The bird flapped and hit and gouged. The baby wailed. The women, each finally getting a hand on the turkey’s neck, lost their composure to hilarity, but managed to snap the bird’s neck and keep hold of it until it was still. Then, grinning and huffing, blood dripping from a dozen scratches, they embraced in tearful laughter.
Blue Shell Woman continued to cry.
They stayed in the copse of oaks that night, tending their wounds and cooking the bird. Most of it they cooked slowly over warm but smoky coals to preserve it, but some they cooked quickly on hot rocks for immediate use. For the first time in weeks, Mouse Road felt sated, warm, and very nearly happy. Speaks While Leaving sat beside her, cradling Blue Shell Woman in her arms, giving the babe her breast.
Watching the baby suckle, Mouse Road wondered how her sister-in-law’s life had changed. “Do you like being a mother?” she asked.
Speaks While Leaving glanced over with a raised eyebrow, as if the question surprised her. “Yes,” she said. “I like being a mother.”
The baby, her eyes closed, her fluffy black hair askew, grasped her mother’s breast with plump fingers and sucked on the engorged nipple with a single-minded industry.
Hypnotized by the scene, by the warmth, and by the good food in her stomach, Mouse Road asked the obvious next question.
“Why?”
Speaks While Leaving sighed in a way that bespoke of contentment. “Being a mother,” she said, “it answers all my questions. I don’t wonder why, anymore. I don’t have to ask the reason for this or that.” She glanced at Mouse Road and then back at her daughter at her breast. “This is the reason why.”
“But,” Mouse Road began, “don’t you worry? I mean, I would. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
Speaks While Leaving laughed gently. “It is strange,” she said, “and I used to worry, but the fact that there is a person who depends on me for everything has somehow made me more independent. I am stronger for having her need me.” She chuckled again, a deep and happy sound. “I know it makes no sense, but it is true.”
But Mouse Road had already begun to wonder about what came before motherhood. “And being a wife?” she asked. “How do you like that?”
Speaks While Leaving gave her a sly look. “Do you mean how do I like being married to your brother, or how do I like having a husband?”
Mouse Road blushed, and Speaks While Leaving laughed.
“I see,” she said. “Such discussions are usually left to one’s mother or other mother.”
Mouse Road grew sullen. “My mother never had any sisters, and now my mother is dead, too.”
“I know. That is why I thought I might tell you what it is like to have a husband, in their stead. If that is all right with you?”
Mouse Road suddenly felt very small and very inexperienced, sitting next to this woman whom she respected and loved so deeply. Speaks While Leaving seemed to know everything, while she felt as if she knew nothing. But she wanted to know, and she wanted to be a wife, and a mother, if that was possible. She snuggled up against her sister-in-law.
“It would be all right with me,” she said, “but let’s talk of it later.”
“Is something bothering you?”
She shrugged, unwilling to commit to words the fear that was still only the black edge of a shadow.
“You are worried about him, aren’t you?”
Mouse Road shrugged again. “Yes,” she said.
Speaks While Leaving put an arm around her sister’s shoulder. “We will find him,” she said. “The Sand Hills are just ahead, and then the shores of the Big Salty. I had a very strong dream about that place. We will find him there.”
The shores of the Big Salty, Mouse Road thought. The funeral grounds.
Late the next afternoon, after a long day’s ride through the rough and undulant country of the Sand Hills, they reached the cliffs over the forested shore of the Big Salty. Surrounding them were the remnants of funeral biers and scaffolding, some recent, some ancient, all dilapidated or sundered by time, weather, or the leather-winged flyers that soared above the seaside cliffs and helped release a person’s soul from the body.
Mouse Road reined in her whistler. She saw only a lifeless collection of mounds and sticks and bones that stretched on for miles. The sage and juniper bobbed in the wind, and the little-teeth hung in the skies, balancing on invisible pillars of rising air.
“He is not here,” she said, struck by the foolishness of their journey.
“What do you mean?” Speaks While Leaving asked her. “We haven’t even started to look for him.”
“He is not here. Even if he was here once, he would not be here now. Why did we think that we would find him here?”
Speaks While Leaving stared at the scene. “No,” she said simply, confidently. “He is here. We will find him here.”
“Why?” Mouse Road asked, feeling the grip of panic in her breast. “There is nothing here but the dead,” she said. “One Who Flies has been missing for nearly three moons. You and I could barely last a single moon without extra food. How could he have been here all that time? Unless...” She kicked her whistler into motion, but Speaks While Leaving maneuvered in front of her.
“No,” Speaks While Leaving told her. “It is not what you think. He is here. My dream was a strong one, and I was here with you, and with him. With both of you.”
“Alive? Both of us?”
She jerked her whistler’s head around and set it running. Speaks While Leaving cried out after her and followed.
The dread that had begun at the campfire the night before now surged into a conflagration of emotion. Was he here? Was he lying here, somewhere among the scrub and the deep ravines? Had he been wounded, or perhaps even fallen from the cliffs? She rode from hi
ll to knoll, no longer scanning the horizon, but searching each brush and tussock of saw-grass, fearful of finding what she sought.
The cliffs had been the funeral grounds for the People and their relatives, the Sage People and the Cloud People, for a hundred generations and more. Everywhere she looked, there were bones. Everywhere she looked was a grandfather, a great-grandmother, a cousin, or perhaps One Who Flies.
The longer she looked, the surer she was, and the idea that he had lain here, untended, unmourned, tore at her heart. Weeping, she rode until she saw a single pole, tilting but still upright, and hanging on it, a shield. Even from this distance, she knew the design—the red-winged blackbird and dragonfly design of Three Trees Together.
Crying shamelessly, she stared at the pole and the shield and felt all her courage flee. Speaks While Leaving rode up beside her.
“He loved him as a father,” Mouse Road said. “If he was anywhere in this place, he would be here.”
Slowly, Speaks While Leaving rode forward. Near the pole, she bade her whistler crouch, and dismounted. Mouse Road watched as her sister searched the ground, and then knelt to pick something up. Standing, she stared at the thing she held. Mouse Road, overcoming her fear, rode ahead to see.
Speaks While Leaving held it out as she came near. Though dirty and darkened with mud, the golden color of the braid of hair still shone.
“He was here,” Mouse Road said, excited.
“Yes,” said Speaks While Leaving, solemnly.
“What is wrong? Isn’t this good news? He was here, but has left.”
Speaks While Leaving frowned. “But where has he gone?” she said. “Without this, where has he gone?”
Mouse Road realized what her sister-in-law was saying. The braid was a symbol, a connection. Long ago, One Who Flies had thrown away his blue wool Army coat, severing his connection to the bluecoats and the vé’hó’e. Now, he had thrown away this, a foot-long braid with a black hawk feather tied to it. For anyone else, it would merely have been an act of grieving, but for One Who Flies, whose connection to the People had always been a fragile thing, she sensed that it meant more.
The Cry of the Wind Page 10
