“Yes, Shadow,” she said, grinning back at him. “You became a shadow of a deer.”
They sat still, smiling into each other’s eyes, feeling close and safe. Her breath went short again, almost vanished. Looking into his eyes was like looking into a deep forest pool that stood still and quiet all the way to the bottom. Looking into his eyes made her see peace.
“One time in the Old Nation I came upon a deer who was dragging the rotting skeleton of his dead enemy around by his antlers,” he said. “I didn’t want that to happen again here.”
Cotannah couldn’t look away from him. She still could hardly breathe. Suddenly, every inch of her flesh, every pore of her skin, every part of her brain was desperate to know all about him. Longing to know. Trying to imagine where all he had been, what all he had done.
“What did you do with the one who was fastened to his dead enemy?”
“I shot him with an arrow and sent him to the next world,” he said, and a great shock ran through her to hear that he, the healer, had done such a thing.
He shook his head at the astonishment in her face.
“It was the only merciful thing to do,” he said. “The burden had driven him mad.”
He started them moving again at a brisk trot through the bright-colored trees.
“Think of that when you think of dragging your past around behind you, Cotannah,” he said. “It’s the source of many obstacles for you. Love yourself and look to the future instead.”
But I want you to love me!
She bit back the impulsive words as a great surge of anger washed over her. The way he’d sounded, he didn’t intend to be around when she was loving herself and looking to the future.
“Listen to yourself and take your own advice,” she said bitterly. “I’m not the one volunteering to strip to the waist and have a white cross painted over my heart!”
When they rode up the hill at Greentree’s Crossing and saw that the big house and the grounds were crowded with vehicles and horses and people, Cotannah looked at Walks-With-Spirits and pulled up her horse.
“You can wait for me out here if you want,” she said. “You don’t need to hear any more accusations that you’re a witch.”
He smiled at her and shook his head.
“I can’t bear to leave you right now,” he said simply. “You don’t need to bear this burden all by yourself, and I promised you I would help.”
Without another word, they began to ride closer.
“It’s a funeral cry,” he said, at the moment she saw the reason for such a gathering.
A brush arbor stood near the cemetery at the edge of the woods behind the house and long tables laden with food sat out in the open, where the relatives and friends, who were not presently wailing and crying over the grave, were sitting around visiting with each other and feasting. They rode toward them side by side.
A buzz of excitement swept across the grounds as soon as people began recognizing Walks-With-Spirits. A man got up to greet them, a man who walked slowly across the grass to meet them with the authority of the landowner and host. She remembered him clearly now that she saw him.
“I am called Folsom Greentree,” he said. “Have you come to mourn my wife’s mother?”
“I am called Walks-With-Spirits and this young lady is Cotannah Chisk-Ko, sister of Cade Chisk-Ko, niece of Jumper and Ancie.”
Cotannah tried to be unobtrusive as she looked the man over, searching for … what? He wasn’t going to wear a sign saying, “Boomers’ Friend,” was he? He looked much the same as when she was a little girl, except that he was a little more jowly and his paunch had grown larger.
“No, Mr. Greentree,” she said, “we weren’t invited to the cry. We’ve come because we need to ask you something.”
He turned without acknowledging the introduction and stared at her, waiting. She swallowed, hard, and tried not to notice the hard look in his eyes and the ungiving cast to his face.
“We would like to ask if you know of any connection between the newspaper called the Oklahoma Star and the man called Jacob Charley.”
Folsom Greentree only stared at her in silence.
She looked at Walks-With-Spirits, but he appeared not to have noticed the man’s rudeness nor her beseeching glance—he was looking over the crowd that was beginning to gather around them. Then Greentree spoke.
“Why has he brought you with him—to do his talking?”
Cotannah’s temper flared.
“I brought him with me is more like it,” she said, fighting to keep the irritation from her voice in hopes that he still would ask them to get down, that he would sit and visit with them.
Preferably, in some private place. More people were drifting from the tables toward them, standing around close, openly staring at her and Walks-With-Spirits.
She wanted to scream at them to go away instead of watching and eavesdropping and making quiet comments behind their hands. If she couldn’t get any information from Folsom Greentree, what in the world would she do? This was her only clue to follow.
Mournful wails floated toward them from near the mother-in-law’s grave, the muttering in the crowd grew louder. Cotannah caught the word “witch” and the word “alikchi” more than once. Evidently, Folsom Greentree did, too.
“And why have you brought him to my place?”
Her hopes for a chat in which she might learn something died. Greentree avoided looking at Walks-With-Spirits—he must be one of the contingent who thought he was a witch.
“Walks-With-Spirits did not kill Jacob Charley,” she said, raising her voice so that everyone there could hear her. “And we are thinking that perhaps the Boomers might know who did. You subscribe to the Oklahoma Star, so perhaps you have read something in it that could help us.”
He glared at her for the longest time, incredulously, as if he could not believe her audacity.
“Are you deaf?” he said. “Didn’t you hear this witch put a death curse on Jacob Charley right in front of your face?”
She stiffened her backbone against the scorn in his voice. And the fear. He was afraid of Walks-With-Spirits.
“You think I am a friend to the Boomers,” he said roughly. “Well, Missy, did you ever think I might be their strongest enemy? I read that paper to see what trick they will use next to try to take our land.”
His triumphant tone as he finished talking and crossed his arms across his chest brought murmurs of agreement from the people surrounding them. Once more, his glance touched Walks-With-Spirits and slid quickly away.
“The witch killed him.”
That hostile whisper rose in the air, coming from several voices.
“No, you fools. He is an alikchi,” someone else said clearly.
Arguments began in the growing crowd. Cotannah glanced worriedly at Walks-With-Spirits, but he was still looking calmly at one person and then another.
A small child, a little, toddling boy, bobbled into view, obviously trying to run and play with some other children who had darted out from behind the adults. All the children moved toward them but the smallest one was left behind, limping along at a hobbled gait, reaching out with his little arms to try to hold back the child nearest him. Walks-With-Spirits began watching him closely.
“Go on, now,” Folsom Greentree boomed, making her turn back to him. “Go back to your family, Cotannah Chisk-Ko, and don’t run around the country with a witch. The Court has decided who killed Jacob Charley.”
“But they’re wrong!” she cried. “I know …”
His expression and his voice turned thunderous.
“Turn your horses around and ride out! I want no witches throwing death curses on my place.”
Her throat aching with painful disappointment, Cotannah pulled Pretty Feather around, starting to do as she was told. But she couldn’t give up.
“Walks-With-Spirits is an alikchi!” she shouted. “And he did not kill anyone. Tay Nashoba, your Principal Chief, believes he is innocent!”
All eyes turned to her.
“Do any of you know of an enemy of Jacob Charley’s who might have caused his death?”
“Not by witchcraft,” some hard voice yelled. “You’re riding with the only witch I know!”
From the corner of her eye she saw Walks-With-Spirits move and she thought he was going to turn his horse, too, but instead he leapt down and walked straight toward the hobbling child, who had thrown himself into a lurch of a gait in a determined effort to run. A sudden silence fell, then individual voices rang out.
“Don’t let him touch that child!”
“Sunflower! Keep him away from your baby—he’s a witch.”
“Let her alone! Maybe the alikchi can heal him.”
Walks-With-Spirits reached the child and held out his arms. The baby stopped trying to run and stood looking up at him.
“He’ll say a death curse!” a woman’s voice screamed.
A young woman who Cotannah took to be Sunflower, the mother, quickly pushed her way through the crowd and Walks-With-Spirits began talking to her. She nodded and he reached down to pick the child up, he stroked the toddler’s cheek and spoke to him, too, then held him out for his mother to hold him while he felt of his legs. He extended them—one, clearly, was two or more inches shorter than the other. He began speaking to the mother, again, but he was too far away for Cotannah to hear what he was saying.
All the cries of advice and the mutterings and murmurings stopped when Walks-With-Spirits turned around and stared into the crowd.
“I will not harm this child,” he said, and his rich voice carried all over the grounds.
Then he turned back to the mother, gave her a nod of the head as a signal, and, as she held her child, Walks-With-Spirits took the boy’s shorter leg in both hands and, his lips moving in a chant, pulled on it, worked with it, massaged it at the hip. The child gave a sharp, high cry of pain.
A burly man pushed forward toward them, but when Walks-With-Spirits turned around and met his gaze, the man stopped in his tracks, glowering. Walks-With-Spirits’s very stance, his height, and the way he held himself was intimidating enough, Cotannah thought, but the straight, hot look from his topaz eyes would catch a wet field on fire.
He gazed all around him, then, and even the last of the whispers and noises died away. Soon the woman bent over and set the child onto his feet again. He tottered and swayed.
“Now see what you’ve done, Sunflower …”
Whoever was calling to the mother hushed then, because the little boy took a step, a small one, and then another. He got his balance and began to run. A bit wobbly in the knees, perhaps, but in a normal run, not the lurching, hobbling gait he’d used before.
Walks-With-Spirits turned and looked at Folsom Greentree, who was staring at him in stunned amazement, then he met the eyes of another person and yet another. After that, he turned his back on Greentree and spoke to the boy’s mother. Then he strode back to his horse and mounted.
He turned to ride away and Cotannah followed, her heart soaring to the skies.
“Surely, surely, with that many people seeing that you have such good medicines they’ll start to say you’re an alikchi, they’ll talk against your sentence and someone, somewhere in this Nation, will come forward and tell who did kill Jacob.”
He held his horse back until she caught up.
“Don’t get your hopes up so high,” he said. “The ones like Folsom Greentree who believe I’m a witch will always believe it. They won’t admit that they’re wrong, they’ll only say that I helped the boy through my witch powers.”
“No!” she cried. “We’ll win them over, a few at a time if we have to. Let’s ride straight through to Tall Pine as fast as we can, and tomorrow we’ll start looking for the names of Jacob’s enemies.”
“Tomorrow I will be in the woods with Taloa and Basak.”
The words slammed into her stomach like a fist. Words and thoughts began tumbling over and over in her head.
“What are you talking about?”
“When I get you safely back to Tall Pine I’ll take some time in the woods alone to try to regain my balance.”
She turned, leaned into her stirrup toward him with pain rushing through her. Was her newfound calm going to desert her when he did?
She didn’t even care at that moment, for the only coherent thought she had was that she wanted him with her.
“And after this you’ll do nothing?” she cried. “You’ll leave your life in my hands and go off into the woods to play with your pets?”
“My life is in the Great Spirit’s hands,” he said.
Incredulous, she stared at him while the disappointment grew stronger and stronger until it turned to a sick dismay in her blood. How had she ever thought that when she was with him, she was home?
It was true, though. God help her, even now, she knew it was true.
And she knew that she would feel a bitter loneliness without him at her side.
She wouldn’t give up on finding out the whole story of Jacob’s death, though, she would not.
“I was wrong in thinking that this quest is bad for you,” he said. “I, too, have learned to see.”
“And just what is it you do see?” she asked, her voice filled with hurt.
“That this search will cause you to grow whether or not it brings you what you seek.”
She looked at him for a moment, stared into his topaz eyes which at that moment were the eyes of a stranger. The serenity in them, the distance with which he was looking at her tore the heart right out of her body.
“And that’s exactly the reason I’m going on with it,” she said, her heart and her voice holding icy calm. “I want to grow up and take responsibility for the consequences of my own actions. All I’m doing is assuaging my guilt.”
She touched her heels to Pretty Feather and flew past him down the sunny road to Tall Pine stretching endlessly ahead.
Chapter 13
They rode hard, all the rest of the day and into the night, arriving at Tall Pine a little before midnight. The dogs roused and started barking when they were coming up the drive, and by the time they reached the house Tay and Emily were on the porch, coming down the steps to greet them. Walks-With-Spirits dismounted and spoke with them briefly while Cotannah was removing her numb body from Pretty Feather’s back, and then, without a word to her, he was gone.
She stood leaning against her horse, watching as he led his mount through the spotty moonlight toward the barn lot, handed the reins to the sleepy stableboy who met him halfway, and walked on until he vanished into the dark. Like a shadow. He was gone from her.
Her whole body felt hollow, light enough to blow away on the slightest breeze, yet it was too heavy for her to move even one foot or one hand. The whole night was empty, now, even if the sky held the moon and stars and high, scudding clouds, even if the air smelled of cedar and dew and mint from the garden. The whole world was empty, now.
“’Tannah?”
She jerked upright and looked around at the sound of her name.
“I’m sorry,” Emily said, as she took her by the arm. “Poor Cotannah, were you about to go to sleep standing up?”
“I guess,” Cotannah muttered.
“We must get you to bed,” Emily said, leading her toward the steps as if she were too feeble to decide what to do on her own. “Unless you want something to eat first. I’m sorry Walks-With-Spirits wouldn’t stay.”
“He said he needed some solitude,” Tay said, handing Pretty Feather’s reins to the stableboy who came for her. “But he has a long walk, and it’s awfully late. I had hoped we could talk over the trip.”
“We didn’t find out one helpful thing,” Cotannah said. “And he healed a little boy, so there’ll either be more people saying he’s a witch or a few more saying he’s an alikchi. Either way, it probably won’t make any difference.”
“Where did he do that?” Emily asked.
“At Greentree’s Crossing. We went there because Folsom Gre
entree subscribes to the Oklahoma Star.”
Tay came to her other side as the three of them entered the house.
Cotannah gave a great sigh.
“Come into the kitchen and give me a snack and I’ll tell you all about it.”
She wasn’t hungry but hoped food would fill up a little of the emptiness and she couldn’t go up to her room and be alone right now, she just couldn’t, even if she was so exhausted she could hardly stand.
So Emily heated milk and made hot chocolate while Cotannah washed up on the back porch and Tay took it upon himself to set out the cold roast beef and homemade yeast bread, imitating Daisy while he did so, which made them all laugh. But that was not enough to comfort Cotannah. She poured out the whole story of the past two days—except for the kisses and intimate talks—and tried to make herself think of nothing but the task of proving Walks-With-Spirits’s curse had nothing to do with Jacob’s death.
“I couldn’t get a feel about Jacob having a connection to Millard Sheets,” she said in conclusion, slumping wearily against the back of her chair while she sipped the hot, sweet drink. “Sheets could have known Jacob well or he could never even have heard of him before he was killed. He’s an impossible man to read—that is, until you get on the subject of Indians in general, and then he’s a walking barrel of hate. All I know is that he’d do anything to destroy the Nations.”
Tay shook his head.
“Well, then, I’ll have to dig deeper to get to the source of the rumors that Jacob had friends among the Boomers,” he said.
Cotannah drained her mug and set it down, then flattened her palms on the table to push herself up from the chair onto legs so tired they threatened to give way at any moment.
“If you’ll try to find out more about that tomorrow, I’ll start working on Jacob’s enemies in business.”
She turned to Emily.
“Mimi, you said he’s known to have several. Do you know who they are?”
“I know Sally Redhawk’s son was in a cattle deal with Jacob that went bad,” Emily said thoughtfully. “Who else quit dealing with him, Tay?”
“Nate Bowlegs. He refused to lay the bricks for the new mercantile because Jacob wouldn’t pay him the contracted price for some work he did for him before.”
After the Thunder Page 21
