Vote Then Read: Volume III

by Aleatha Romig

  "What?" Sakote glared sharply at his little brother. How did Hintsuli know about yupuh? Had he peered into the women’s hut? "Wicked boy! It’s forbidden to look—"

  "I didn’t look!” Hintsuli jutted out his smug chin. “She told me to tell you she was in the time of yupuh."

  Sakote tightened his jaw. A shadow had fallen across the beautiful day. His sister was up to something—sneaking off to the miner’s camp and telling Hintsuli to lie for her—and he had to find out what it was.

  "I promise, brother," Sakote swore to Noa, "I’ll find the truth."

  Noa nodded brusquely, but his step was heavy as he began the long journey home, and Sakote’s heart ached for his friend. He squeezed his hands into fists. He wanted to shake his foolish sister, shake her till her teeth clattered like a shokote rattle and she came to her senses.

  CHAPTER 2

  When Sakote returned to the village, he resisted the urge to barge into the women’s hut and yank his sister out. Instead, he let his blood cool in the lengthening shade, filled his belly with trout, and waited patiently for her to emerge.

  But she didn’t. Not when the women returned from digging bulbs beside the creek. Not when the sweet smoke of roasted fish drifted into the canyon. Not when the young men finished gambling beside the dying embers of the fire. The hunting-bow moon moved far to the west, the tribe retired for the night, and still she didn’t come out.

  Sakote spit onto the gray coals of the cooking fire, making them sizzle. He glared toward the women’s hut. Did she think she could hide in there forever? Towani had always been willful, but how dared she defy him—the man who was to become the next headman of the Konkow? And how could she break Noa’s heart with such deception?

  He poked at the charred remains of the fire with a dogwood branch and scanned the cluster of hubos—the bark-covered houses that made up the village. No smoke curled from the tops of the conical roofs. The Konkow slept.

  Sakote had seen his people through another day, brought food to his mother’s fire, told a tale of Oleili, Coyote, to the children, and listened to the wisdom of the elders. He should be content. Yet it was never contentment he felt when the sun went to sleep behind the hills. It was always relief. Which was why his sister’s defiance troubled him.

  Their world was changing. The elders didn’t see it, partly because they didn’t travel as far or see as much as Sakote did, and partly because they didn’t want to. They didn’t see how the white men arrived as thick as grasshoppers in the flower season. How they planted sticks in the ground as if they could possess the land. How they fought with fists and drank whiskey till they couldn’t walk. How some of them looked upon the Konkow with hateful eyes and Coyote’s sly grin.

  Noa was different. He understood the Konkow ways. He would provide meat and shelter for Towani, and he’d carry her in his heart. They’d make babies together to grow and thrive among the other children of the valley. Noa would care for Towani. He’d protect her. And Sakote would have one less Konkow to worry about.

  But if Towani mingled with the white men from the mining camp...

  One brave cricket attempted to sing, his chirrup slow and hesitant across the cool night. Sakote pulled the deerskin up over his shoulder and dropped the dogwood branch onto the coals. He sighed, and it felt as if his spirit left him with his breath.

  How could he protect Towani? How could he protect the village and his people? There were too many white men, and he feared what his vision foretold—that he wouldn’t be around to keep them safe.

  The chirping cricket abruptly ceased his song, and Sakote froze, pricking up his ears. Furtive but heavy footfalls approached, crunching the mulch of the forest. It was a man, by the sound. Sakote slipped his knife from its sheath, testing the edge with the pad of his thumb, and stared quietly toward the source of the commotion.

  The footsteps slowed as a figure broke through the shadowy cedars into the village clearing. When Sakote saw who it was, he put away his knife and waited.

  Noa hunkered down beside him. "We have to talk, Sakote,” he whispered. “Something’s happened. Something bad, very bad." He rubbed his fingers nervously across his mouth.

  Sakote’s heart thudded. He despised the English language at the moment, with its subtleties and endless ways to stretch out the telling of a story.

  "A friend of mine brought news from the mining camp," Noa said under his breath, "about that white healer Towani went to see. Doc Jim was his name, Dr. James Harrison. It seems he...well, he up and died last night."

  Sakote’s heart turned to ice.

  "No one knows what he died of," Noa continued, "since he was the only doctor for miles around. There weren’t any marks on him or anything. He just dropped dead in his cabin."

  Sakote stared hard into Noa’s eyes, black as pitch in the darkness, and he feared he knew what was behind the white healer’s death. Towani’s “medicine.”

  Noa bit his lip. "Most of the miners suspect it was too much liquor. It seems he had an unnatural hankering for whiskey." He dropped his head down, his hat shielding his eyes. "But if someone were to look too closely into the man’s liquor bottle...or if there were, I don’t know, a couple of long black hairs on his coat or a...a footprint by his cabin where there shouldn’t be..."

  Sakote’s blood, frozen in fear, now began to heat with rage. How could his sister have done such a thing? How could she have killed a white man? How could she have endangered their people in this way? He clenched his fists and thrust out his jaw. His nostrils flared with a breath deep enough to feed a loud bellow of outrage. But he remained silent, instead channeling his fury into the icy glare he shot toward the women’s hut. Noa seized his arm, trying to stop him as he lurched forward, but Sakote wrenched from his grasp.

  Noa cussed under his breath and followed Sakote as he stalked off.

  It was forbidden for a man to enter the women’s hut. The Great Spirit, Wonomi, would be vexed. But at the moment, Sakote didn’t care. He’d waited long enough. He ducked down and crept through the low crawlway.

  Little light penetrated the hut, and it took Sakote a moment to see that there was only one person sleeping inside. He edged forward, and when Towani stirred, he made a grab for her. She had time for one short squeak of surprise before he clapped his hand over her mouth and hauled her up with an arm wrapped around her waist. She struggled like a trapped cougar kitten, snarling, twisting her head, and clawing at his arms.

  "Quiet!" he hissed.

  When she heard his familiar voice, she ceased fighting, but she still held her body stiff, wary of him.

  He lugged her out of the hut, eliciting a curse of irritated disbelief from Noa, and then carried her off into the woods with Noa at his heels.

  When they reached a starlit break in the trees, far from the ears of the village, Sakote set his sister abruptly onto her feet.

  "Speak!" he commanded, crossing his arms over his chest.

  Towani flinched momentarily, but then lifted her proud chin and stared off into the night. "I have nothing to say."

  Her voice cracked, and it was hard to speak roughly to her when she looked so pale and sleepy in the moonlight. But he had to do it. He had to know the truth.

  "You’ve killed a white man," he bit out, "and you have nothing to say?"

  She glanced at him, clearly startled that he’d found out.

  "What did you give him?" he demanded. "What did you put in his whiskey?"

  She looked nervously at Noa, and Sakote grabbed her by the shoulders.

  "Answer me."

  Her eyes glistened wetly. "Buckeye."

  Sakote’s chest felt as if it would cave in. Somehow he’d hoped he was mistaken. Somehow, impossibly, he’d hoped that Towani knew nothing about the white man’s death, that she was innocent, that she was still his wide-eyed little sister whose worst flaw was a stubborn streak. But it was not to be. In one word she’d condemned herself. In one word she’d become a murderer.

  "Why?" Sakote choked, unable to
rectify the innocent trembling of his sister’s chin with the murderous truth of her actions. "Why, Towani?"

  Hearing him use her name made tears fill her eyes and spill over onto her cheek. Beside them, Noa grimaced and fidgeted uncomfortably. But she didn’t answer.

  "Do you know what you’ve done?" Sakote freed one hand from her to rake his hair back in frustration. "Do you understand what you’ve done, my sister?"

  "He was only a stupid willa," she muttered, though she dropped her eyes in shame to speak the insult.

  Fury rose in him like a creek in the storm. "And who are you, that you would kill anyone needlessly and without sorrow? Not Konkow. Not my sister." He jerked her shoulder. "Who are you then? A hudesi?"

  She gasped. The hudesi were people so depraved and evil that they couldn’t enter the spirit world after they died, but became ghosts, forever wandering the earth.

  "Why did you do it?" Sakote demanded, digging desperate, fearful fingers into her shoulder.

  "Stop it!" Noa protested, shoving at Sakote’s back.

  "Why, Towani?" Sakote insisted.

  "You leave her alone, Sakote," Noa warned, "or I swear I’ll—“

  "Why!"

  Towani burst into sobs, jolting Sakote from his rage. He released her like a hot cooking stone, and she buried her face in her hands. Noa went to her, enfolding her in his arms.

  "I’m not evil," Towani mewed in English, instantly filling Sakote with self-loathing.

  Noa soothed her. “Of course you’re not,” he said, combing her hair with gentle fingers and flashing Sakote such a glare of accusation that he felt like a hudesi himself.

  "The willa was a...a bad man," she sobbed.

  Sakote pressed his lips into a straight line and stared at the moon, which seemed to grin at him in mockery. Towani didn’t understand. Not only had she done a terrible thing, but she’d put all the Konkow in danger. She might feel justified in what she had done, but the white man’s ways were different, and they often destroyed what they didn’t understand.

  "Many of the willa are bad men," Sakote said. "But you can’t kill them just because—“

  "I had to kill him," Towani said quietly. The faraway look on her tear-stained face sent a chill along his backbone. "My spirit wouldn’t rest. It wouldn’t be still...until I took vengeance."

  Sakote frowned. What was she talking about?

  "I couldn’t tell you, my brother," she said. "You would have slain him like a warrior, and the willa would have hunted you down. But a woman..." A teary smile faltered on the corners of her lips as she stared up at the stars. "She can be clever, like Coyote." She shook her head at him. "They won’t find out. I left no signs. No one saw me. It is done. Akina."

  Sakote’s thoughts spun like leaves caught in a whirlpool. "No, it’s not done. You speak of vengeance. For what? How do you even know this man?”

  Sakote saw Towani’s throat bob as she swallowed hard. "That is between The Great Spirit and me."

  "The hell it is!" Sakote barked, borrowing Noa’s expression. "You poison a white man. You put our people in danger. And now you hide the truth from me, your own brother!" He raised a fist of anger, though they both knew he’d never struck anyone in his life, not even another man. "Tell me why."

  Towani’s eyes grew bright with fear, but she said, "No."

  "Towani," he growled.

  "I won’t. I won’t ever tell you." Her chin began to quiver again. "I won’t tell anyone!" she cried. "Akina!"

  "Towani!" he roared.

  Sakote wasn’t prepared for the great shove Noa gave him, one that sent him sprawling on his backside in pine needles. Shock displaced his rage, and he looked up, bewildered, into Noa’s snarling face.

  "You know what you are, Sakote?" Noa spat. "You’re a fool! A big, dumb, ugly, blind fool!"

  With those parting words, Noa yanked the deerskin from Sakote’s shoulders and wrapped it tenderly around Towani. Then, with one backward glance of condemnation, he guided Towani through the forest on the path toward the valley, toward his home.

  Sakote collapsed onto his back with a defeated sigh and lay upon the scratchy leaves, staring up at the stars. Somewhere on a distant hill, a coyote yipped and howled. Nearby, a deer mouse rifled through the mulch. An owl floated on silent wings across the sky, like a lazy arrow shot from the bow of the moon.

  As Sakote’s blood calmed, his profound confusion cleared, and his eyes finally opened to the horrifying truth, a truth that left his chest heavy with pain. Only one thing could make a woman seek such vengeance on a man. Only one thing could compel her to such secret violence.

  His heart felt sick. It couldn’t be, he despaired. Not Towani. Not his little sister who used to tag along in his footsteps, who could charm the cheeztahtah, the robin, from her nest, who’d been initiated into the women’s dance only three leaf-falls ago.

  And yet he knew it as well as he knew the stars. The willa bastard had raped his sister.

  His blood stilled. How could this have happened to her—his sweet, gentle sister? How could he have let it happen?

  For a long while, he stared up at the stark sky, allowing cold grief to wash over him like a stream scrubbing the roughness from a pebble. But anger still burned silently in his belly, a forgotten coal he yearned to stir to life. Towani had been right. His was a warrior’s rage. He hungered for a warrior’s revenge, thirsted for the blood of his enemy. He longed to bind the willa to a tree, to shoot him full of arrows until the white man’s voice grew hoarse with screaming and the last of his coward’s blood stained the earth.

  But Towani had stolen his vengeance. And in doing so secretly, she’d protected the tribe. His little sister had been wiser than he in this. How well she knew his heart.

  As he gazed up at the icy chips of stars journeying across the black night, they doubled and blurred in his vision. The world of the Konkow was changing, and like the stars, there was nothing he could do to alter its path. The best he could hope for was to keep his people safe.

  Already he was failing.

  CHAPTER 3

  "Farm?" Mattie repeated, wrinkling her freckled nose as she beat the dust of the final trail to Paradise Bar from her skirts. "Are you saying my husband-to-be, Doctor James Harrison, has become a farmer?"

  She supposed she shouldn’t be astonished. After all, her long journey west by steamer and bungo, mule and riverboat, had been nothing but a series of surprises.

  Mr. Ezekiel Jenkins’ cornflower blue eyes pierced hers with an odd sort of bemused fascination, as if she were some creature the skinny old prospector had never seen before.

  His companion, a giant of a man called Swede, with a chest that strained his suspenders and a face so rosy it looked as if he scrubbed it a dozen times a day, irritably cuffed the smaller man, nearly knocking him down.

  "‘Bought the farm’?" he asked Zeke, shaking his head in disgust. "Ma’am, what my friend here means to say is the doc, well, he..." He raised the hand holding his felt hat to scratch at the blondest hair Mattie had ever seen. "That is, he..." He stared at her for a long while, hesitant to speak. "Well, shucks, ma’am, I’m afraid your husband-to-be...well, he kicked the bucket yesterday."

  Mattie glanced blankly from one man to the other. She had no idea what they were saying, between their fanciful talk of farms and buckets and their outright butchering of the English language. But she was already imagining the wonderful portrait she’d make of the two prospectors, here among the ramshackle lean-tos that must serve as storage sheds for the residents of Paradise Bar.

  Zeke was as wrinkled, salty, and lean as a stick of jerky. Long gray waves of thinning hair hung over his protruding ears and draped his bony shoulders. His nose had a slight bend in it, as if he’d stuck it once where it didn’t belong and found the wrong end of a fist. His lips all but disappeared into a beard that looked like a fracas between a kitten and a dozen spools of multi-colored thread. The map of wrinkles etched in his sun-weathered face told of hardship and laughter, bitterness an
d hope. But his eyes—they’d be the focus of the portrait she’d do of him one day. Twinkling with wisdom one moment, snapping vexedly the next, those eyes had witnessed the good part of a century.

  Swede’s face was bare, save for a faint peach fuzz of blond whiskers. The black hat jammed over his head a moment ago only accentuated his sunburned ears and the startlingly bright, bone-straight hair that stuck out around them like straw. Though he spoke in all seriousness at the moment, the crow’s feet at the corners of his indigo eyes and the waves across his high forehead reflected a life of mischief and glee, and his wide mouth seemed made for laughter. He had shoulders as broad as an ox, and ham-like hands that she suspected could tenderly milk a cow as well as throw a mean punch.

  "Aw, she don’t get it, Swede," Zeke decided, scratching at his scraggly beard.

  "Well, shit! I mean, shoot!" Swede quickly corrected. "Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am."

  Mattie bit back a smile. These two were far more interesting than the proper, simpering gentlemen of New York. Oh yes, she thought, she was going to like it here. It was colorful, just as her voyage to California had been.

  Her portfolio was bulging with sketches she’d made of the journey. There was a rendering of the ship she’d boarded in New York, its twin stacks exhaling clouds of steam, passengers crowded along its whitewashed railings, their faces bright with promise as they gazed across the white-capped sea.

  And there were sketches made days later of several of the passengers: a nervous young minister clinging to his Bible like a tot to a favorite blanket; four beardless prospectors in flannel shirts and heavy boots as new as their faces; an old sour-faced woman in cropped hair and men’s trousers with a pickaxe slung over her capable shoulder; a sparkle-eyed Irishman with a missing tooth and more patches in his coat than coat.

  She’d sketched their lodging at the mouth of the Chagres River in Panama—a thatched hut where gentlemen stretched out beside beggars and Mattie learned that if a young woman was weary enough, she could indeed fall asleep in a room crowded with strange men.