“Now, what’s that supposed to mean?” Corn Poe shot back.
Beatrice ignored him, and the three rode out of the gully, resuming their course toward the river.
Chapter Eight
THE COLD • ANTLERS • A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
THEY RODE the rest of the afternoon, Corn Poe rambling on about everything under the sun and then some. Lionel had never heard anyone who could talk so much, and he soon found himself drifting in and out of sleep as he rocked across the open prairie, riding on the great horse between Corn Poe and Beatrice.
It was the warmest Lionel had been since he had woken the other morning listening to the drip of the melting icicle. Ice didn’t seem to be melting now; if anything, Lionel thought that the air had grown colder. Corn Poe must have agreed because he now rode along in silence, slumped forward and buried in Ulysses’s mane. Corn Poe could have been dead for all Lionel knew.
Lionel looked down at the snow that passed beneath them and at Corn Poe’s leg dangling from the frayed cuff of the small boy’s patched work pants. Lionel thought his exposed skin looked almost blue. Blue, like the Frozen Man.
Thinking about the Frozen Man sent a shudder down Lionel’s spine. He ran his fingers across the bear claws in his pocket and thought that if he and Beatrice and Corn Poe didn’t get wherever they were going soon, they would all be dead, dead like the Frozen Man.
“You cold?” Beatrice asked over the steady cadence of Ulysses’s heavy breathing.
“No, I’m okay,” Lionel lied.
“How much farther?” Corn Poe moaned.
Good, Lionel thought. Corn Poe isn’t dead. Lionel didn’t want to see any more dead people.
Lionel scanned the horizon and the rolling hills that rose and fell in the distance with greater frequency. He remembered the pictures of the ships that the captain back at the school had shown him, and thought that the hills looked like the barreling waves of water that the tall ships sailed across. The three of them and Ulysses were like a ship rolling along on a sea of endless snow. Up and down, down and up…
“I don’t mean to complain, but I don’t feel my legs no more,” Corn Poe announced.
They had reached the Milk River hours ago. Then, they had continued toward the setting sun. Excluding the occasional clump of cottonwood, they hadn’t seen anything but snow in a long time. Lionel thought that it was as if the entire world had stopped, and it was just Lionel, his sister, and the horse…and now, Corn Poe.
“Maybe we should walk awhile. Give Ulysses a rest.” Beatrice pulled the horse to a stop and slid gracefully from his back. Corn Poe did the same, but his legs gave out and he fell with a plop into a deep snowdrift.
“Boy howdy, this is some of the coldest snow I ever laid eyes on!” Corn Poe proclaimed as he struggled to his feet. He stood there a minute shivering, trying to get the feeling back in his legs.
Lionel slid down and once again scanned the horizon. The past two days raced through his mind, and as he looked around at the snow-covered desolation, he felt again as if he wanted to cry.
“We best keep movin’,” Beatrice said.
“How are you plannin’ on leadin’ that horse without no rope?” Corn Poe asked as he made his way out of the snowdrift.
“He’ll follow.” And with that, Beatrice continued. As she walked, Ulysses followed. Horses loved Beatrice and Beatrice loved horses, that much Lionel knew—and now so did Corn Poe.
They walked on, but this proved to be harder than they thought. Ulysses’s long legs stepped in and out of the snow with ease compared to the children’s shorter legs. They were soon warmer from the movement, but exhausted.
“Damn, I’m hungry,” Corn Poe exclaimed between gasps. He began to look worried and, like Lionel, could have very well been on the verge of tears.
The three struggled up a high riverbank, with Ulysses fighting his way through the snow behind them. when they got to the top of the rise, Lionel thought he saw something moving toward them from the direction of the river. He strained his eyes and saw it again, this time briefly standing on top of the next bluff. It seemed to Lionel that it was a deer with very large antlers looking at them, almost spying on them. Lionel would catch a glimpse, but then it would disappear only to reappear a few feet from where it last appeared, depending on the direction the children moved. Lionel turned and saw that Beatrice had also seen the strange deer in the distance.
Corn Poe continued, oblivious to the foreign presence, “Y’all remember when I said I needed to stretch my legs? well, I reckon they are permanently stretched after this one….”
Beatrice raised a finger to her lips, and Corn Poe’s eyes went wide.
“What? what is it?” Corn Poe whispered. Lionel couldn’t tell if he was shaking from the cold or trembling with fear.
“Lionel, listen to me. You two stay here. Stand next to Ulysses, all right? Just stand there behind him and don’t move.” And then Beatrice was gone.
Beatrice was fast, and if it weren’t for the tracks that she left in the snow behind her, Corn Poe and Lionel might have thought that she just vanished. with his gaze, Lionel traced his sister’s tracks as they disappeared down the other side of the gully toward the river. He wanted to follow but knew that Beatrice would not stand for that. Something in the way that she had told Corn Poe and Lionel to stay put kept them right where they were.
“What is it?” Corn Poe asked. His lips were now as blue as his legs.
“We saw something. Something over the hill.”
“What in the hell was it? I didn’t see nothin’.”
“It looked like a deer to me, but we best keep from talkin’,” Lionel answered.
“A deer?” Corn Poe exclaimed, louder than Lionel thought he meant to. “You think we might get us some supper after all?”
Corn Poe’s comment about supper hit Lionel like a punch in his empty stomach. He glanced up to the ridge, and there it was again not thirty paces away from them—the antlers, at least. This time the antlers did not disappear but seemed to grow. They were getting closer.
Now Corn Poe saw the antlers. Lionel raised his finger to his lips, but with little result.
“What is that?” Corn Poe said, forgetting to whisper altogether. “That don’t look like no deer to me!”
It no longer looked like a deer to Lionel either. As it got closer, it began to look more and more like the body of a man with a deer’s head. That was about all that Corn Poe needed to see or could stand. He turned in the opposite direction of the ghostly deer-headed creature and moved as fast as he could through the deep snow.
Lionel was tempted to do the same, but given how little distance Corn Poe was gaining and the adamant instructions from Beatrice, he opted to say put. The figure raised its arms into the air, causing Corn Poe to let out a yelp that would raise the dead.
Then the creature began to speak….
“Ássa und! Póóhsapoot!”
But it spoke in a tongue that neither Corn Poe nor Lionel could understand. Lionel spun around, startling Ulysses.
Corn Poe hadn’t made it ten steps when he turned back to Lionel. “Come on, ya idjit! It’s gonna kill us!”
Lionel took a few steps back, frantically looking around for Beatrice. No Beatrice. He continued to backpedal as the creature moved down the slope toward them. It spoke again, and although its words sounded familiar, Lionel could not understand what it was saying. Then suddenly, it spoke English.
“Don’t be afraid, little one. I’m not here to hurt you,” the creature called.
Lionel found this hard to believe. As it came closer, it became apparent that the creature was definitely some sort of man, but with the deer head it was about the size of Corn Poe’s father, Big Bull.
“Cover your ears! Even the sound of its voice could curse ya for life!” Corn Poe screamed as he crawled though the snow behind Lionel. “It’s an apparition, I tell ya! A ghost!”
Lionel believed him. The creature didn’t have trouble in the snow like Lio
nel and Corn Poe; as a matter of fact, it seemed to float.
“Hey, I told ya, I ain’t gonna hurt ya,” the deer head called out again. Its voice seemed old and cracked.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth? Ghostly apparitions from beyond ain’t known for honesty!” Corn Poe yelled, struggling through the snow.
Lionel turned. “How would you know?”
“I know! I saw the spirits when my kid sister Viola died! Run!” Corn Poe was out of breath and barely moving. He seemed to be making his situation worse, and Lionel thought he would soon bury himself alive. where was Beatrice?
The creature continued down the hill toward them. Lionel decided to make a stand. He crawled through the snowdrift back to Ulysses’s side, back to where Beatrice had told him to stay. He studied the creature as it came closer and concluded that although it was strange, it wasn’t a ghost. For starters, Lionel realized that it was not floating above the snow, but wore snowshoes that enabled it to skim easily across the top.
“What in the hell are you children doing way out here in weather like this, anyhow?” the deer head asked, now just ten paces away.
“That ain’t no concern of yours!” Corn Poe yelled from his snow hole. He was no longer moving and lay panting in the drift.
“It’s getting colder and colder, and here y’all are just out wandering?” the deer head continued. “I’d say that the storm pushed through, but another one’s on the way. Helluva time for a stroll.”
Lionel moved closer and saw that the deer head was actually a hood—a hood worn by an old man. The cowl covered the sides of his face and was fashioned from hide and antlers to mimic a deer’s head. Beneath the hood, his face was dark with deep creases around his eyes and mouth. Two thick braids with feathers woven into them fell onto his broad shoulders.
“Well, what’s it going to be? You gonna run off like your friend over there and hide in a hole like a rabbit, or are ya gonna stand up and tell me what the hell you’re doing out here? out here on my land?”
Lionel stood perfectly still.
“What—your tongue froze to the roof of your mouth?”
“No—no, sir. we’re out here looking…”
“Looking for what?” the man demanded.
“Well, I—” Lionel was interrupted as Ulysses’s ears shot back, and the big horse let out a long, hard whinny. The noise startled Lionel and caused the old man with the deer-antler hood to spin around—and face Beatrice.
Beatrice sat on the back of a large mule. Lionel had never been so happy to see his sister in all his life.
“Say there, just what do you think you’re doing?” the man yelled, pulling a large pistol from beneath his heavy coat.
Before he knew what he was doing, Lionel lunged at the man and the gun. “That’s just my sister, don’t shoot!” Lionel screamed. He hit the old man as hard as he could, but the man easily held him off with his free hand, aiming the pistol at Beatrice.
“If you know what’s good for ya, you’ll step down from my mule!”
But Beatrice didn’t get down from the mule. She chose instead to spur the animal forward and slowly ride it down the snowy slope toward Lionel, the man with the hood, and Ulysses.
“I knew this would come to no good!” Corn Poe yelled from his hole.
The man seemed puzzled and unsure how to react to Beatrice’s icy defiance. Beatrice continued forward, and Lionel saw that the mule pulled a travois, and on that sled was the carcass of a small elk.
Beatrice rode right up to them and slid effortlessly from the back of the mule to Ulysses. She then handed the man the mule’s reins. He watched Beatrice, a puzzled look still on his face.
“Beatrice?” the man stuttered in disbelief, then spun to face Lionel. “So…you’re Lionel. I should have seen it in your eyes. I’m slippin’ in my old age, I tell ya.”
Lionel looked up at Beatrice, who sat calmly on Ulysses’s back. Beatrice might have been a girl, Lionel thought, but she sure looked like a warrior up there on that great horse.
“Why, this is a surprise! Beatrice, it’s been a while, and you…” the man said as he roughly shook Lionel’s half-frozen hand, “when I last saw you, hell if you weren’t but two foot tall. I’m your grandpa.”
His grandfather’s hand felt warm as it engulfed his.
“Why, judgin’ from yer hand, you’re half froze, boy.”
Lionel heard the word “froze” and instinctively slipped his other hand in his coat pocket, feeling the Frozen Man’s bear claws.
“We better get you out of this weather,” their grandfather continued. “I tell ya, another storm’s coming.”
Beatrice and Lionel’s grandpa pulled his mule’s reins tight and circled back to the small hill.
“We ain’t too far from my place, so I think it’s best we get going. we can talk there. I’ll be interested to hear what y’all are doin’ way out here and where you got that horse you’re on there, Beatrice.”
In a few steps, their grandfather was halfway up the hill.
“And you best fetch your rabbit friend over there. He might be interested to see how us ghosts are livin’ in this here modern age.”
Chapter Nine
A BELLY FULL • RECOUNTING THE ESCAPE • BUFFALO ROBE • NAPI THE OLD MAN • LIONEL’S DREAM
THE FIRE in Grandpa’s cabin on the Milk River danced around the cast-iron cauldron that hung in the stone fireplace.
“There’s more stew in there, boy,” Grandpa reminded Lionel as he threw a small piece of birch wood onto the fire.
A strong north wind whipped at the tiny cabin, a last-ditch effort to extend winter just one storm longer. Lionel was tired, and his stomach had never been this full.
Corn Poe slept next to Lionel, and from the sound of his snoring, slept soundly. The small boy hadn’t moved since he had finished his third helping of stew and collapsed in front of the fire, rubbing his thin, pale legs. Now Lionel lay wrapped in a thick buffalo robe, listening to Corn Poe’s heavy, labored breathing and Beatrice’s retelling of their escape from the boarding school and the soldiers’ outpost. It had all happened so fast.
As Beatrice told of the Frozen Man and how the soldiers had laughed and stolen from him, Grandpa’s face looked first sad and then angry. But he didn’t say anything. Not a word.
Beatrice went on about the priest, and that all she wanted to do was to pray like her mother used to. Beatrice told Grandpa that she wanted to learn these prayers, not the prayers that the government made for them. Then Beatrice told Grandpa about Sergeant Haskell Jenkins and Private Samuel Lumpkin and how they held her under the freezing water and tried to cut her hair with the sheep shears.
Lionel stared at the fire, but all he could see was Jenkins’s snarling smirk and the darker-than-midnight black leather of his coarse eye patch.
Beatrice told Grandpa how she drove the sheep shears through Jenkins’s hand and that she was worried because she did not feel bad about it…not in the least. She told him that Jenkins deserved it and she would do it again, or worse, if given the opportunity. Then Beatrice told Grandpa about Lionel, and Ulysses the great horse.
Grandpa leaned over and smoothed Lionel’s hair with his big hand. Lionel felt happy wrapped in the buffalo robe, lying before the fire with a belly full of food, listening to his sister. But Lionel also had a feeling that everything had suddenly changed.
Grandpa sat back in his rocking chair by the fire to pack and light his pipe.
“Well, the government can’t be too happy. I wonder how long it will take them to figure out that you’d come and try to find me,” Grandpa said after a while. “The snow helps, but they’re coming.”
Grandpa took a long draw on his pipe. He released a swirl of smoke that hung in the rafters. “They are definitely coming.”
“I’m sorry, but let ’em come,” Beatrice said almost without emotion. “They can’t catch me. I’m never going back.”
Grandpa took another draw; Lionel and Beatrice listened to the l
ow crackling burn of its embers. Rings of smoke followed and drifted about the room amid the fire’s dancing light.
Lionel shifted and felt the bear claws dig into his side. He was ashamed to show them to anyone, but wondered if his grandfather could tell him if the Frozen Man might need the claws wherever it was he had gone.
Lionel broke the silence. “Grandpa?”
“Yes, Lionel?”
“Where did the Frozen Man go?”
“Where did he go?” their grandfather asked, leaning farther back in his rocker.
“Yes, I don’t understand. At the school they said that—”
“Ah well, at school,” Grandpa interrupted, “people say a lot of things; and me, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“At the beginning,” Lionel answered.
“Listen to him, will you?” Their grandfather laughed, exhaling a large cloud from his pipe. “It’s a long story, but maybe you’re right. To get to the end, it just might be better to start at the beginning.”
Lionel lost his grandfather’s face for a moment in the smoke.
“But this was a long time ago. Back in the days of Napi, Napi the old Man.”
“Napi?” Beatrice asked, pushing the hair out of her eyes.
Their grandfather hesitated. “It’s late. You two should sleep and let me think about what has happened.”
Beatrice watched their grandfather with a solemn expression on her face. He shifted uncomfortably.
“Okay, okay, but just for a bit, now. You two need to join your friend there and get some sleep.”
The children lay back in front of the fire.
“From the start. way back, eh? Let’s see,” their grandfather began, “when I was a boy, the old ones used to say that there was a time when everything, this whole world, was covered with water. This was before the time of this land.”
Lionel stared into the dancing firelight, trying to imagine what it would be like to ride a horse under that much water.
“Waves rose and fell, crashed and churned, but nothing…only water.” Their grandfather sat forward with a creak of his rocker. “Well, almost nothing.
Starfish Page 4
