by Vella Munn
The first time he’d seen her, he’d thought she was so thin that she wouldn’t survive a winter here. That was before he’d discovered the strength in her arms and legs, the soft challenge of her breasts and belly and thighs. His wife had never reached for him in joy and need, and he barely remembered that other time when he’d lain with a woman because he wanted to, not because it was expected of him.
Tory brought him to life. With her under him, he felt strong. With her, he no longer asked himself why he’d been forced into this world not of his making. With her, he had a reason for being.
Eagle! I cannot reach you. There is only her, blinding me to everything except her.
A sliver of unexpected sunlight ahead caught Tory’s attention and pulled her out of the mist she’d been wrapped in. Looking around Loka’s shoulders, she spotted a long, thin slit in the rock ceiling. They were entering a room, smaller than Fern Cave but larger than the wide places in the tunnel. Barely aware of what she was doing, she aimed the flashlight at the floor so she could see the room in its natural light. She couldn’t make out any details beyond what must be his bed placed a couple of feet to the right of the slit. Staring at the bed, she realized it consisted of dark fur. It was so large, she couldn’t imagine it having come from anything except a bear. A bear pelt for sleeping when she’d always had a mattress and blankets.
“This is it?” she asked. Her voice was the barest whisper. “Wa’hash?”
Disappointment slammed into her. She’d expected where he lived to look more dramatic, although what she meant by dramatic she couldn’t say. From what she could see, there weren’t any artifacts, nothing that hinted at the people who had considered it sacred. Still, there might be something in the corners.
When she stepped into the room, Loka remained where he was. Taking that as his cue that he didn’t care what she did, she aimed the flashlight into one of the corners. She instantly recognized a number of spears, several bows and more arrows than she could count piled together. A sense of discovery began to grow in her. If Loka had preserved the weapons his people had discarded once they had access to rifles, what else had he kept?
Tule rush baskets.
Tule moccasins and mats, even clothing made from bulrush.
Two-horned mullers for cracking wokas seeds.
Fishing nets and hooks, dip nets, long, narrow gill-net seines, harpoons.
Deerskin shirts and leggings, an incredibly ornate dress decorated with what must be pounds of shells. Snowshoes.
Hairbrushes made from a porcupine tail.
An infant’s bed created out of soft tule, several board cradles.
Her gaze fixed on the bed. Although she was in awe of everything she’d seen and things she’d just begun to be aware of, that small bundle made the most impact. The Modocs were known as the tribe that went to war against the United States and murdered a general. In all that history, factual and otherwise, the simple fact had been lost that they were also men, women and children—families.
She knelt near the basket and ran the back of her hand lightly over the fragile creation. Loka might have brought it here because it was what his son had used, but even if it had belonged to another child, the fact remained that someone had gone to the effort of gathering and working the tule plant so their newborn would have something to snuggle in. Tears stung her eyes. She blinked several times in an attempt to clear her vision. Although she wanted to ask Loka about the basket, she didn’t yet feel strong enough to face him. Instead, she focused on the nearest wall.
It was covered with drawings.
Picking up the flashlight again, she trained it on the drawings. Their richness and clarity, their unbelievable abundance took her breath away. Trembling a little, she stood and moved a few feet to her left. No matter where she looked, there wasn’t a stone surface that hadn’t been etched or painted.
She saw stick figures of hunters going after a herd of deer, more figures seated in a tight circle with a costumed figure in the middle. There was a depiction of a large village complete with fish-drying racks, canoes, even children playing in front of a sturdy-looking wickiup.
Crouching a little, she studied twelve separate and yet interrelated scenes. In one a man was standing under a tree while what must be leaves fell around him. In the next, a heavily bundled figure looked up at snow. Others showed women standing in hip-deep water while they gathered tule. Twelve scenes, all of them showing people involved in their environment and the weather. Could this be the Modoc calendar?
Her shaking increased. Still, she managed to face Loka. No matter what she started to say, they all seemed like the words of an idiot. No, not an idiot. A woman who has discovered the heritage, the tradition, the past of an entire people.
“Loka. This—this is what has kept you going, isn’t it?”
By way of an answer, he walked over to the nearest wall and pointed at something. She joined him. He’d drawn her attention to a petroglyph of an eagle with its wings spread over a man wearing a fierce-looking mask. “The first Kiuka.”
The first medicine man. Feeling hot and cold at the same time, she tentatively touched the rock. Instead of the cool she expected, she felt warmth—the same warmth she thought she’d sensed when she touched the drawings in Fern Cave. Unable to accept the impossible, she briefly withdrew her hand, then brushed her fingertips over it again.
Warmth? Heat?
Her mind stumbled over possibilities, all of them more incredible than the last. She knew firsthand how unbelievably powerful Cho-ocks had been. Somehow the Modocs had been able to keep their shaman’s skills from whites, but this drawing clearly showed Kiuka controlling an eagle.
It wasn’t simply a drawing. The bird, she realized, wasn’t just any eagle. It had to be the one the Modocs credited with naming all other animals. Until this moment, she’d believed it to be yet another part of Modoc legend and superstition, an interesting story, nothing more than that.
She no longer did.
“Kiuka?” she whispered. “Please tell me about him.”
Loka’s gaze slid from her to the petroglyph. “You want this?”
“Yes. Yes. Please.”
His shadowed features contorted. She felt his inner struggle, could only wait. “Kiuka lived in the time of Kumookumts,” he said after a long silence. “He lived more than a hundred winters. Part of him still exists—here.” He indicated the drawing. “And at Fern Cave, on Spirit Mountain, wherever he once walked.”
I believe you.
“Kumookumts entrusted him with great knowledge, warned him that he must safeguard that knowledge and share it only with those who are worthy.”
“Like Cho-ocks?”
To her surprise, Loka shook his head. “Cho-ocks did not have Kiuka’s wisdom. He had walked too long in the white man’s world, ate his food, used his weapons. He answered when the army men called him Curly Headed Doctor. His heart forgot how to beat as a Maklaks.”
“But Cho-ocks kept you from dying. He did—he did something to that boulder.”
“Yes.”
A simple yes wasn’t enough, but she wanted the explanation to come from him willingly and not because she begged for more. Waiting for him, she gave the eagle figure a closer look but didn’t touch it or the one of Kiuka again. Many of the drawings were crude; these two had been done by a craftsman. Even the eagle’s feathers were clearly detailed and something had been done to his eyes to make them shine. Kiuka’s eyes, too, looked alive.
“Cho-ocks told me something,” Loka went on. “I asked why he did not take the sleeping herbs himself. He said there was only enough for one warrior. Kiuka had come to him in a dream and told him he had to die a human’s death so the enemy would not know of ancient truths. Kiuka chose me because Eagle and I shared the same heart. Because my love for my son was so strong.”
This was too much for her to absorb. Needing distance from him, she began a systematic examination of the petroglyphs. It was more than a random selection of scenes, drawings t
hat had been put here simply because they satisfied someone’s whimsy.
“This is incredible,” she whispered. She didn’t care that she must have already said the same thing a good dozen times. No other words could possibly express what she was feeling; she couldn’t keep her reaction to herself. “Absolutely incredible.”
“It is Wa’hash.”
Wa’hash. His people’s legacy. How right he was!
“I had no idea.” She went back to the drawings of those brave Indians who’d been the forerunners of the Modocs. “No one does.”
“I know.”
His voice held a warning note, but she was so overwhelmed by the richness that surrounded her that she couldn’t concentrate on it. Nearly everything of what the Modocs had been before outsiders arrived had been lost to history. Only, it was all here. She now understood an incredible amount about their religious structure, their belief system. More than that, she knew beyond any doubt that Kumookumts wasn’t simply a folk figure. He had once existed for the Maklaks. He had left his massive footprints in the earth. Even more incredible, he’d empowered the first shaman, not with useless bags of bones and feathers, but the knowledge of how to take herbs and plants and other native materials and turn them into something capable of keeping a human being in a state of suspended animation.
Loka was the living proof of that.
Shaking her head again at the wonder of it all, she moved over to a series of petroglyphs that showed various domestic scenes. When she had time to study this in more detail, she would better understand ancient Modoc family structure—something else that had been lost to so-called progress. She wanted to ask Loka to explain what the women were doing. Obviously they were preparing food, but the figures were so small that she couldn’t make out what they were working on.
Later. Right now—
Yet another drawing caught her attention. This one was situated so that a little of the sunlight coming in through the slit in the ceiling touched it. Looking at it, she made out an elaborately decorated figure—obviously a shaman—standing over a prone figure. The shaman held two objects over the figure’s body. The patient, if that was who he was, seemed to be opening his eyes. “The shaman is healing him, isn’t he?” she asked when she realized Loka had joined her. “At least he’s trying to.”
Loka pointed at the two objects. “Sacred Eagle feathers.”
“Did they work?”
“Yes, if the patient was a believer.”
Loka was a believer. She heard that in his voice, only had to look at him to understand that.
“Oh, Loka! This is—” Words failed her. Overwhelmed, she gripped his shoulders and gazed up at him. His face was cast in shadows, but she could still see life dancing in his eyes. That and something else. “Thank you. Thank you. It’s here—all of it. History. Richness. More—more than we’ve ever known about any Indian tribe. To know for certain that they lived their lives in certain ways, that their religious beliefs ran through the entire fabric of their existence, to understand the truth about Kumookumts and the first shaman…” Feeling as if she might fly off into a thousand pieces, she held on to Loka even more firmly than she had earlier. “This changes everything. Turns theory and speculation into, into…”
“Changes?”
“Yes. Once people understand—”
“No!”
He’d been wrong. A fool. How could he have been blind to what she was? Grizzly’s warning—why hadn’t he heeded him?
Tory struggled in his grip, but Loka didn’t stop dragging her toward the tunnel opening. Even when she begged him to say something, he remained silent because there were no words for what he felt. What he feared.
What was that she called herself, an anthropologist? She’d told him enough that he knew it was her task to drag the past out of its resting place and expose it to the brightest lights.
“You can’t keep this to yourself!” she gasped when he tried to push her up the ladder. “Loka, it isn’t right. To keep everything buried under the ground—Loka, there are so many lessons in the past. So much that was good and right. Like putting one’s trust in an eagle and spending your life knowing that eagle will protect you. Kiuka. Loka, I felt something of him. It—”
“Eagle is mine.”
“No.” She tried to wrench free. He released her because he was afraid he would hurt her if they struggled. “No, not just yours. Loka.” She raked her fingers through the mass of her hair. “Eagle guards your life. I can’t believe I’m saying this, only it’s true. Eagle guides you. Enriches you. And Kiuka and Kumookumts…There are so many people, good people, who deserve—”
“No.”
“I know. I know. I promised I wouldn’t say anything about Wa’hash, but that was before I saw. The richness—I can’t keep this to myself. I can’t.”
He couldn’t listen to this. Maybe he was alive because he’d been entrusted with safekeeping everything the Maklaks had once been. He’d broken the most sacred of trusts because he’d allowed a woman—an enemy woman—into his world. Under his skin. The danger she represented must end today. It must! Wa’hash was his people’s legacy. The past. Not hers to exploit.
Acting on instinct, he lunged. Although she tried to flee, he wrapped his arms around her, pinning her to his side. Then, mindless to her flailing arms and legs, he threw her over his shoulder and hauled both of them up to the surface. Setting her on her feet, he stepped away and drew his knife.
She stared, not at his weapon, but into his eyes. Her look weakened him, took him back to lovemaking, of having her to sleep beside. To her look of awe as she stood on the top of Spirit Mountain and looked out at his world.
She had found a home in his heart, and he couldn’t silence her.
Chapter 17
Stumbling with nearly every step, Tory headed toward where she’d left her car. Although the sun beat down around her, warning of a day approaching one hundred degrees, she couldn’t put her mind to the folly of staying out here without water.
The rage in Loka’s eyes—no, not rage really. No matter how many times she forced herself to go over their last few moments together, she didn’t understand his emotions. Or maybe the truth was, she understood them all too well and was unable to make herself face hard reality.
The Modoc warrior had been a man of violence. He’d endured a war, seen his ancestors’ land torn apart by rifle-bearing strangers. He hadn’t known enough of gentleness, had no reason to trust anyone. Despite his desire to find his place in the present, he didn’t know how. Because of those things, he’d wanted to silence her, permanently, when she blurted that she wanted the world to know about his people’s rich and beautiful past.
Something had stopped him, something that had everything to do with what they were, or had been, to each other. Instead of plunging his knife into her and ending the threat she represented, he’d stalked away from her. Left her alone in this lonely land.
Would she ever see him again?
Did anything else matter?
Facing the awful reality that she might have killed whatever had begun between them made it impossible for her to concentrate on where she was going, and she had to trust her instinct to return her to Fern Cave. She kept looking around, hoping to see Loka, and when that didn’t happen, she scanned the sky for a glimpse of Eagle. Her ears were tuned to the sound of Wolf’s howl. Even if she heard an owl or coyote, she would have welcomed that, since any sign, even one that warned of danger, would have meant she was being touched by the same forces that ruled Loka’s life.
This was his world, his domain. How could she have been so presumptuous to declare she had a right to share it with others?
But if no one knew of Loka’s heritage, it would die with him.
The argument swirled inside her, preventing her from listening to what her heart might be trying to tell her. Whenever the possibility that she might never see Loka again intruded, she cast it away because to acknowledge it might destroy her. Instead, she placed one foot af
ter another and struggled to find a way to blend what might be irreconcilable.
When she first felt the prickling at the base of her spine, she prayed it meant Loka had decided to return to her, but when she concentrated on her reaction, she knew it hadn’t been caused by the man who’d taken her body, and heart. Someone else was watching her.
Looking around, she glimpsed a shaft of light that came from the sun glinting off something ahead of her. Cold anger mixed with a deep sense of apprehension when she realized she was looking at a man holding a pair of binoculars. How long had Fenton been watching her?
By the time she came close enough that they could carry on a conversation, she’d forced her fear to the back of her mind. Although she wanted to insist he leave her alone, she knew that would only increase his interest—as if it weren’t high enough already. She and Loka had been out of range of his binoculars when they’d emerged from Wa’hash, but if Loka had inadvertently come within sight of Fenton—
Silent, she waited for Fenton to speak. It seemed incredible that she’d seen him only a few hours ago. So much had happened since then—discovery and loss.
“You do get around,” Fenton said. He made no attempt to hide the fact that his binoculars had been trained on her.
“So do you.”
“True.” A slight smile touched his lips. “You think I had no business telling that old Modoc that you were related to Canby, don’t you?”
Whatever Fenton was fishing for, she had no intention of going after the bait. Shrugging, she reached into her back pocket for her car keys. However, any hope she had of getting away from him died when he placed himself between her and her car. She realized she hadn’t heard his vehicle approaching, which meant he must have come while she was too far away to have caught the sound. If he’d followed her out here today—
“I thought you had your hands full getting ready for the senator’s visit.”
“I’m busy enough. But not so busy that I’m unaware of other things.”
