Although she didn’t want to, Evelyn bent down. The body had been there awhile. Scavengers had been at it. Most of the flesh was gone. Only a few shreds of skin remained. Punctures high on the brow gave a clue to the manner of death. “An animal did this.”
Dega gazed about them. The grass had been trampled and worn, and in a patch of dirt was a large print. He squatted and pointed. “Cat,” he said. “Much big cat.” Catching himself, he amended, “Sorry. Very big cat.”
Evelyn came over. “A mountain lion.” It was rare for painters to attack people. Her father, in all his years in the Rockies, had only ever been attacked by mountain lions twice, so far as she knew. Bears, on the other hand, he’d clashed with often.
“How long you think she be dead?” Dega asked.
Evelyn shrugged. “I’m no judge. Pa and my brother would likely know just by looking at her. If I had to guess, I’d say a week, two at the most.” She turned to the lodge. “Anyone in there?” she called out. When there was no answer she switched to Shoshone. “Ne hainji.” No one replied. She pushed on the hide, and her stomach churned. The stench was worse. Ducking, she warily entered. “Oh my.”
Another body was inside. The scavengers had not been at it, but it had rotted and the maggots had done their grisly work. Evelyn gave it a quick scrutiny. “This one was a boy,” she reckoned. Not much younger than Dega, she reckoned.
“Cat again?”
“Yes,” Evelyn said. Slash marks on the dead boy’s buckskins confirmed it. “Let’s get out of here.” She pushed on the hide and took Buttercup’s reins and walked toward the stream. The stink faded and she could breathe again. She sucked air into her lungs and declared, “Thank God.”
Dega shared her revulsion. He never liked being around dead things. The Nansusequa always buried their dead within a day of death, usually with a feast and singing to celebrate passing to the other side. They didn’t weep and cut themselves as some tribes did. To them, death was a cause for happiness, not sorrow. “Those mother and son, you think?”
“Maybe,” Evelyn said. It begged the question of what had happened to the father. Could be the painter had gotten him, too.
“We bury them?”
Evelyn debated. That was the proper thing, she supposed. But there wasn’t much left of either the woman or the boy. And it wasn’t as if they were kin or even Shoshones. They were strangers. She felt no obligation. Besides, it would take time she would rather spend more pleasantly. “I think we should leave them where they are for their own people to find.”
“If you say,” Dega said. Though in his opinion a person should show respect for the dead as well as the living.
“We’ll go up the valley a ways and make camp,” Evelyn proposed. She mounted and clucked to Buttercup. She tried to shut the bodies from her mind and think only of Dega. “Are you hungry?”
“Not after them.”
Neither was Evelyn. The grisly find had spoiled her mood and her appetite. She refused to be discouraged, though. She had gone to all this trouble to be alone with him, and by God, she wasn’t going to let anything spoil it. Forcing a smile, she said, “We can’t let all the food I brought go to waste.”
Dega was shocked. That she could think of eating amazed him. “We eat later if that all right.”
For over a quarter of a mile Evelyn stuck to the tree line. She came on a spot where a crescent of grass indented the forest, and said merrily, “Look what we have here. This will do just fine.”
“What about cat?” Dega asked.
“It’s long gone by now,” Evelyn assured him. “My pa says they roam a large area. Fifty to a hundred miles or better.” She was more worried about a grizzly happening by. “We’re safe enough.”
“I hope,” Dega said.
Evelyn untied the picnic basket. From her parfleche she took a short stake, and using a rock, pounded the stake into the ground. She tied one end of a length of rope to the stake and looped the other end over Buttercup’s neck. “So she won’t stray,” she said when she noticed Dega looking at her.
“What I do with my horse?”
“I have more rope. We’ll tie off yours, too.”
Next Evelyn stripped off her saddle and saddle blanket. She was lowering the saddle when she realized Dega was still standing there. “Something the matter?”
“No.” Dega had been on the verge of bringing up the issue his mother had raised, but he couldn’t muster the courage.
“Make yourself useful. Fetch some firewood.”
“I be right back.” Dega went into the woods. The shadows were lengthening and it was uncommonly still. He marveled at the absence of life. In King Valley there were animals everywhere, but here all he saw were a few birds. His search for fallen limbs took him an arrow’s flight from the clearing. He was bending to pick up a short branch when an impression in the bare earth caught his attention: another cat print, only this one was smaller. To him it appeared as if part of the paw was missing.
Dega straightened. He hoped Evelyn was right about the mountain lion being gone. They were fierce fighters, those big cats. Troubled by his find, he started back. Without warning, the undergrowth to his left rustled. He turned and spied a vague shape low to the ground. Dropping the firewood, he raised his lance. He glimpsed what he took for a tawny hide and tensed, but whatever it was, it ran. He took several steps to try to get a better look, but the thing was gone. He waited to be sure it didn’t circle around. When he was convinced it was safe, he picked up the firewood and struck off for the clearing, more troubled than ever.
Evelyn was waiting for him. She had spread a blanket and set the food out. “There you are. I was beginning to think you got lost.”
Dega was insulted. His people prided themselves on their woodcraft. He could tell direction by the sun and the stars and had never been lost in his entire life. But he didn’t mention that. Instead he said, “I see something.”
“What?”
“I not know.”
“Was it the mountain lion?”
“I think too small,” Dega said.
“Good. That’s the last thing we need.” Evelyn patted the ground. “Why don’t you set that wood down and we’ll get the fire going?” She opened her parfleche and took out a fire steel and flint and her small box of tinder. Her father had taught her how to light a fire when she was little and she was so adept at it that in no time she had puffed a tiny flame to life and their fire was crackling and growing. She put the steel and flint and box in her parfleche and turned to Dega, who had sat across from her. “You can sit closer if you want. That way I don’t have to reach across to hand you food.”
Dega had never really noticed how she was always telling him what to do. He slid around the fire and she handed him a piece of pemmican.
“Help yourself to whatever else you want.” Evelyn was tickled. Here they were, at long last. She gazed on his handsome features and felt a stirring deep inside.
Normally Dega would be famished, but he was nervous, which wasn’t normal for him at all. “We need talk.”
“Yes,” Evelyn agreed. “We do.”
Just then a twig snapped and they both glanced at the ring of woods.
Something was staring back at them.
Chapter Twelve
For a few anxious moments Evelyn thought it was the mountain lion. Then she realized that the eye shine was different; the eyes were round, not slanted. “What is that?” she whispered.
Dega didn’t know. He went to rise and suddenly the thing spun, scrambling on all fours, just as it had done when he saw it before. His lance in hand, he ran to the woods.
Evelyn was quick to catch up. She raised the Hawken to her shoulder, but whatever it had been was gone. “This valley is starting to spook me.”
“Maybe we should go,” Dega said, proud that he got the English right.
“No.” Evelyn refused to be deprived of their night together. She had gone to great lengths. She had even lied to her parents. “It was probably just a
rabbit.”
“Big for rabbit,” Dega said.
“Well, it sure wasn’t the cat that killed those poor Sheepeaters.” Evelyn lowered the Hawken and made bold to take his hand. “Come on. Let’s finish our meal.”
There was so much Evelyn wanted to say, and now that she had the opportunity, she couldn’t bring herself to. She spread butter on a slice of bread and took a bite and chewed but didn’t taste it.
Dega nibbled a piece of pemmican. He had held off as long as he could. Then, taking a deep breath, he asked, “You like me, yes?”
“I more than like you,” Evelyn responded. Here was her chance to come right out and say what was in her heart, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
“I more than like you,” Dega said. “I more than like you very much.”
“You don’t know how happy you’ve just made me.”
“Happy is good.” Dega struggled to say it right. So many English words had different meanings or shades of meaning that choosing the best was difficult. “Want to ask question.”
“Ask away.” Evelyn smiled to encourage him.
“Could be we go on liking more than much?” Dega had to force his mouth to say the next part. “Could be we want be husband and wife?”
Evelyn’s heart gave a flutter. “Yes?” she said breathlessly.
“What then?” Dega asked.
“Sorry?” Evelyn said, mildly confused. “How do you mean?”
“What we do after?”
“I reckon we’d do as most married folks do,” Evelyn replied. “Live together. Do things together.” The idea of one of those things made her cheeks grow warm.
“Have little ones?”
Evelyn grew warmer and coughed. “Having babies is part of married life. Why? Are you hankering to have some?” She thought her ears were about to burn off.
“I like maybe have son one day,” Dega said. “Teach him as Father teach me. It be great funness.”
Evelyn didn’t correct him. “And you want to know how I feel about having kids, is that it?”
“No,” Dega said. “I want know about…” He stopped and racked his brain. “About how you want teach them.”
“Teach them what?” Evelyn asked, confused again.
“Teach them all there be.”
Evelyn had a ready answer. “I would teach them as my mother and father taught me. How to live, how to do things. More important, I would teach them to be honest and true.” She felt a twinge of conscience at that.
“You teach white ways?” Dega voiced his innermost concern.
“White ways. Shoshone ways. All that I have learned I would pass on to them.”
“Oh.”
Evelyn was puzzled by the disappointment in his voice. “Isn’t that what any parent would do?”
“What about Nansusequa ways?”
“We would teach them those, too. It goes without saying,” Evelyn assured him.
“Nansusequa and white and Shoshone,” Dega said.
“Yes.”
“All three.”
“Doesn’t that make sense?”
Until his talk with his mother, Dega would have agreed it made perfect sense. Now he harbored doubts. “Then they not be Nansusequa.”
“What are you talking about? If you teach your children your ways, they will be as Nansusequa as you are.”
“No. They be white and Shoshone, too. Only be Nansusequa if they only learn Nansusequa.”
Evelyn was trying to comprehend his insistence. “I was raised white and Shoshone, and look at me.”
“You mostly white.”
“Not entirely,” Evelyn objected, even though he was right. She’d never taken to the Shoshone way of life as fully as her brother. Not that she had anything against them. She had just always favored her father’s side of the family, not just in looks. She liked to eat white food and to wear white clothes and she had loved town and city life. How strange, then, that she was in love with someone who wasn’t white.
“I need children be Nansusequa,” Dega said. “Only Nansusequa. Not white. Not Shoshone.”
“Oh,” Evelyn said, deeply disturbed. “When did you come to that conclusion?” This was the first she had heard of it.
As they talked, the valley darkened with the onset of night. In the distance carnivores made their presence known.
“The day before this one. What it be called again?”
“Yesterday.”
“Yes. Yesterday,” Dega said, bobbing his chin.
“What brought it on? Why is it suddenly so important to you that your children be raised Nansusequa and only Nansusequa?”
Dega helped himself to a carrot and bit off the end. He chewed slowly, the crunch loud in his ears. “Important not just me. Important for people.”
“But you five are the last Nansusequas left,” Evelyn brought up. “You are your people.”
“Want more of us,” Dega explained. “Want many Nansusequa. Like before white men attacked village.”
“You aim to rebuild your tribe?” Evelyn was appalled that he was bringing this up now, of all times. She reached over and placed her hand on his. “We can talk more about this when we get back.”
“Now,” Dega said.
“Why is it so blamed important?” Evelyn was growing annoyed. All the trouble she had gone to, and he threw this into her lap. “You and me wouldn’t have kids for a good many years.”
“Must find out now.”
“Why, consarn it?”
“So have right woman.”
His reply was akin to a physical blow to Evelyn’s gut. He was saying she might not be right for him. “Let me be sure I savvy. You’re saying that any children of yours have to be raised as Nansusequa and nothing but Nansusequa?”
“Yes,” Dega confirmed, happy that he had gotten his point across.
“And you don’t give a hoot about the wife’s feelings? She can go to Hades for all you care?”
Dega was worried; she sounded mad. He remembered that “hoot” was the sound an owl made. How that applied in this instance was a mystery. So was “Hades.” Shakespeare McNair had used that word once or twice and he recalled it had something to do with people who lived deep underground. So if he understood Evelyn, she was saying he was not sounding like an owl and he wanted his wife to live under the earth.
“You’re not being reasonable,” Evelyn said. “If a person is half-and-half and she has a baby, there is nothing wrong with her wanting to raise it whichever half she’d like.”
“You want raise baby white and Nansusequa?”
“That’s fairest.”
Dega was torn between his mother’s appeal and Evelyn’s logic. Both had merit. But his mother had touched him deeply with her desire to see their tribe reborn. The Nansusequa could rise again—only if he and his sisters stood firm in how their children were to be reared. Suddenly standing, he declared, “I must think.” The hurt that came into Evelyn’s eyes made his gut tighten. She was upset and he couldn’t blame her. Wheeling, he crossed to the forest. Clenching his fists in anger at how their outing had been spoiled, he realized he had left his lance by the fire.
Evelyn was in despair. Always before, they talked their differences out. Granted, most were minor, and she had come to think that they saw eye to eye on most everything. This new spat didn’t bode well for their future. She reached for the tin of raisins and put it down again. She wasn’t hungry anymore.
Dega stopped and looked back. He wanted to go to Evelyn and embrace her and tell her everything would be fine, provided she agreed to bring up their children as Nansusequa. He took a step, and froze. A stealthy scrape had come out of the undergrowth to his left. Fingers flying, he unslung his bow and set the string. He slid an arrow from his quiver and nocked the shaft and drew the string, the barbed tip trained on the vegetation. It could be a deer. It could be a rabbit. It could be the beast that slew the Sheepeaters.
Something moved.
Dega strained his eyes. The thing
appeared to be on all fours. He stood his ground, aware that if he loosed his shaft it might be deflected by intervening brush. Let the creature come closer, he told himself. Let it come out where he couldn’t miss. It was staring at him, as if curious. His fingers began to hurt from the strain of keeping the string pulled.
Suddenly the thing started toward him.
Over by the fire, Evelyn decided to try to hash out their differences. She gripped her Hawken and entered the woods, where she saw he had an arrow to his bow. “Dega?” she asked in concern. “What is it?”
Dega saw the shape stop and turn toward her. He still hadn’t had a good look at it.
“Dega? Didn’t you hear me?”
Like a rush of wind, the thing was off. Dega glimpsed pumping limbs—and something else. He blinked in surprise, and the apparition was no longer there. Lowering his bow, he plunged into the brush after it, certain he must be mistaken. Ahead, the shape flitted between two trees. He ran faster, but when he got to the same trees, beyond was a wall of woodland awash in the pale glow of the full moon, and nothing else. “Where did you get to?” he asked out loud in his own tongue.
“What did you see?” Evelyn came to his side, breathing heavily from their sprint.
“I saw…thing,” Dega said.
“Was it the mountain lion?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Dega shrugged, a typically white gesture he had learned from her. “It ran off.”
Evelyn lowered her Hawken. “Well, if it wasn’t a lion and it wasn’t a bear, we have nothing to worry about.”
Dega was inclined to agree, but ferocity came in small sizes as well as big. Wolverines weren’t half as large as bears, yet they were every bit as formidable.
“Want to head back?”
“Wait.” Dega hoped for another glimpse. It had to have been a trick of the light, but he needed to be sure. The woods stayed silent save for the sigh of the wind and the keening of a fox.
Evelyn shifted her weight from one foot to the other. They were wasting time, in her estimation. “I’d really like to talk more about this Nansusequa business.”
“Children must be Nansusequa,” Dega declared. Or it would crush his mother and be the end of his people, forever.
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