‘I mind being compared to the hind end of a cow. Or being told my breath smells like horse urine.’
Dega could not believe what he was hearing. ‘Your brother do that?’
‘And worse. He is a fiend incarnate,’ Evelyn said affectionately, ‘and he’s so much older than me. But that’s all right. I’ve held my own. When he got me really mad, I would run to my ma and pretend to cry and say he had pulled my hair. He would be in hot water for a week.’ She chuckled. ‘Those were the days.’
‘You say mean things at him?’
‘Of course. Why do you sound so shocked? You and your sisters must have done your share of teasing.’
‘Not like you do,’ Dega said. He loved Tenikawaku and Mikikawaku too much to ever deliberately hurt them, not even with words.
Evelyn was beginning to sense a gulf between them. His upbringing and hers were so different. ‘Tell me something. Did you and your sisters play when you were little?’
‘Play how?’
‘You know. Tag. Hide and seek.’ Evelyn saw his confusion so she elaborated. ‘Chase each other, hide from each other, those sorts of things.’
‘Yes,’ Dega said, smiling, glad they had found something in common. ‘We play find stick, and spin-around, and we play frog.’ He imitated the leaping motion. ‘Jump over each other.’
‘Then you did do some normal stuff,’ Evelyn said, and was about to go on when a sound caused her to raise a hand for silence. It had come from up ahead.
Dega listened and heard what she had heard; a loud series of thuds. ‘What that be?’ he whispered.
‘A hoof. Come on.’ Evelyn made off rapidly through the lodgepoles. She had gone only a few dozen feet when the phalanx of boles gave way to scattered spruce, and there, its reins entangled in a low limb, was her buttermilk. Squealing in delight, she ran over and threw her arms around its neck. ‘I am so glad to see you, I can almost forgive you for running off!’
‘How it get caught?’ Degamawaku wanted to know.
‘Beats me,’ Evelyn responded with a shrug. She commenced unraveling the reins. ‘Maybe it was scratching itself. Maybe the reins snagged as it was walking past. The good news is we have one of our animals, and we can use it to catch the other.’
‘Other run fast,’ Dega reminded her.
‘Not fast enough to get way from Buttercup.’ Evelyn climbed on and adjusted her dress, then smiled down at him. ‘What are you waiting for? Swing up behind me.’
Dega placed a hand on her mount’s flank. ‘I thought you say this buttermilk.’
‘It is.’
‘But you call Buttercup.’ Try as he might, Dega could not comprehend why someone would name a horse after a cup of butter.
‘Buttermilk is what whites call horses this color. Buttercup is the name I gave her. I was going to name her Bluebird because they are my favorite birds, but then I figured I should give a horse a horse name.’
‘Whites be strange.’
‘Hey, now. You are starting to sound like my brother,’ Evelyn playfully bantered.
Dega was shocked. ‘I am much sorry.’
‘What for, silly? I love my brother very much.’ Evelyn felt herself grow warm again, but this time not with anger. She beckoned. ‘Hop up. We’re wasting daylight.’ It had occurred to her that if they did not catch the dun soon, they would not make it home until well after dark, and riding at night was fraught with all sorts of dangers. She extended an arm. ‘Grab hold.’
‘Very well.’ Dega let her help him and settled himself behind her, his lance between them.
‘You might want to hold on to something,’ Evelyn advised. ‘Put a hand on my shoulder if you want.’ And with that, she clucked to the buttermilk and slapped her legs against its sides.
It helped that in its flight the buttermilk had been following the dun. Broken brush and freshly churned clods of dirt marked the way. Evelyn assumed the dun was bound for the valley floor and for a while it appeared to be doing so, but then it inexplicably turned to the northeast. Slowing, she reined after it. ‘What is this lunkhead doing?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Your horse is heading for the high cliffs,’ Evelyn explained. Only farther east than before. She noticed a lot of other tracks, those of deer and elk primarily, and it hit her that the dun was following a game trail.
‘What is lunkhead?’
‘Anyone or anything with less brains than God gave a tree stump,’ Evelyn clarified while bent forward so she could read the sign.
‘Trees have brains?’ Dega distinctly recalled her saying once that the brain was what the Nansusequa called a mota. People had a mota, and animals had a mota, and birds had a mota, but plants most definitely did not.
‘Of course not, silly goose. That’s the whole point.’
Now she was calling him a goose. Dega bowed his head and sighed. His desire to learn the white tongue seemed more hopeless every day. Why did it have to be so complicated?
‘What in the world?’
Dega looked up. They had emerged from the trees and were climbing a bare slope. Ahead reared a high cliff. The tracks they were following clearly led right up to it—and ended. ‘Where horse go?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Evelyn replied. ‘But it sure looks to me as if it vanished into thin air.’
Nine
Evelyn King reined up. She looked to the right, she looked to the left, but there was no mistake. The horse’s tracks ended at the base of the cliff.
‘How that be?’ Degamawaku asked.
‘We’re about to find out,’ Evelyn answered, and gigged the buttermilk. As they climbed, she had her second premonition of the day. This one filled her with mild excitement, for if she was right, it was news her father would very much want to hear. He had been saying all along that there had to be more than one way in and out of the valley. Sure enough, not long ago they had found a second, and he had used a keg of black powder to close it. As he told her afterward, ‘The more ways in and out there are, the more ways our enemies can get at us. It is the ones we don’t know about that can do us harm. A war party could be in among us before we suspected they were here.’
They were encouraged to always be on the lookout for more.
Now this.
Evelyn was less than fifteen feet from the cliff when the truth became apparent.
It was not a solid wall. There was an opening. The reason it could not be seen from below was simple: one side extended a few yards farther and overlapped the other.
Dega smiled when he saw the explanation. Nature had many wonderful tricks.
Evelyn drew rein again. She had expected a fissure, maybe, with barely enough room for a horse—or an elk. But the gap was wide enough to drive a wagon through and carpeted with grass. ‘Well, I’ll be. We have found a secret pass.’
‘What we do?’
‘What do you think?’ Evelyn rejoined. ‘Where that ornery critter of yours went, we go too.’ She kneed Buttercup.
The walls rose high on either side, the tops seeming to reach to the clouds. The wind was louder, amplified, Evelyn guessed, by passing through what was in effect a roofless tunnel. Tracks showed that wildlife used the pass regularly. Some of the prints were of mountain buffalo. She hoped they didn’t run into any. The temperamental brutes might charge on sight, and in the narrow confines of the pass, escaping would prove a challenge.
Dega was quite content to do whatever Evelyn wanted. He was not upset about the loss of the dun to the extent she was. He trusted in That Which Was In All Things, and knew that what would be, would be. If they were meant to find the dun, they would. If they were not meant to find the dun, they would not. Why be upset about something you had no control over?
The ground gently sloped downward. Twists and turns were common. Evelyn could seldom see more than fifty to sixty feet ahead. It was a long way to the bottom. When, at weary last, they emerged from a split cliff over a mile below where they had entered, it was to find the sun high in the afternoon s
ky.
Evelyn squinted, and frowned. There was no chance of making it home by dark now. Her folks would be worried, but it could not be helped. They would understand about the horse. Recovering it was the important thing. Horses were too valuable to simply let them run off.
Still, she hoped they might find it relatively soon. She reasoned that by the time it reached the bottom, it had been tired and hungry and thirsty. It would look for a stream, and grass.
The forest was a mix of trees, the undergrowth thick. Pine needles muffled the buttermilk’s hoof falls.
Evelyn enjoyed the sun on her face, and the singing of the birds. She also liked riding double. ‘How are you holding up back there?’
Dega wondered what she meant. All they had done was ride through a pass. ‘Me fine.’ He caught himself and quickly amended, ‘Sorry. I am fine.’
‘Your English is getting better by the day.’
Pride filled Dega. ‘Thank you.’ He almost said, I do it for you. But he did not.
‘I think you speak it better than your pa by now,’ Evelyn mentioned. When the family first arrived, only Wakumassee spoke any English.
‘Maybe so,’ Dega conceded. But he had more incentive than his father to learn it.
‘Wait until my pa hears about the pass,’ Evelyn said to keep the conversation going. ‘We’ll have to ride up to watch the fireworks when he blows it up.’
‘Sorry?’
‘My pa and Uncle Shakespeare will set a charge of black powder and bring those walls crashing down. It should be quite a sight.’
‘But why do that?’
‘So our enemies can’t get at us, silly. Pa will close every pass we find except the main one. It is better that way.’
Dega thought of the tracks and what they signified. ‘Animals use pass. Many animals.’
‘They won’t anymore.’
‘What animals do then? How they go from high on mountain to low on mountain?’
‘That is for them to figure out,’ Evelyn said. ‘Maybe they won’t be able to. Maybe those in our valley when the pass blows will stay there, and those down here will be stuck down here.’
Dega tried to find the right words to express that it was wrong, that they were interfering with the natural order. But before he could, she leaned forward, studying the ground intently.
‘Will you look at this.’
‘What?’
‘That stupid dun isn’t showing any signs of stopping. He is hurrying along as fast as his tired little hoofs will take him. And he keeps heading east. I don’t know as how I like that.’
‘Why?’
‘He should be wandering aimlessly. But he is acting like a horse with a purpose, almost as if he has a place he wants to be.’
‘Maybe horse does.’
‘Oh really?’ Evelyn responded, and laughed. ‘Where, pray tell?’ She gestured at the limitless expanse of woodland that rolled for unending miles in all directions. ‘We’re in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. There is nothing here but wilderness and more wilderness. To him, one spot should be as good as the next.’
‘You know horses better,’ Dega said, to indicate perhaps there was something he was missing.
‘That I do,’ Evelyn agreed. ‘Which is why I don’t know as how I like what yours is up to.’
For another hour they rode in silence save for the sounds of life around them. A squirrel chattered at them from the safety of a high branch. A doe bolted in panic. A tall-eared rabbit loped off in long bounds.
The tracks continued to lead east. Evelyn bent to examine them for the umpteenth time, as if by doing so she could solve the mystery. ‘East,’ she said aloud. ‘Always to the east. What is east of us? Nothing but more mountains until you come to the prairie.’ A sudden thought jarred her, and she snapped upright. ‘I’ll be switched. I have figured it out.’
‘You have?’ Dega said.
‘It is a long shot but it is the only answer I can think of. Your horse could be on its way Bent’s Fort.’
Dega’s family had been to the trading post but once. Nate King had introduced them to one of the owners, a man named Ceran St. Vrain, and over his father’s protests Nate bought them supplies and various other items the Kings and McNairs felt they needed. ‘Bent’s Fort long way.’
‘That it is,’ Evelyn said. ‘But it’s where my pa got that dun to begin with. He bought it from some freighters bound for Santa Fe. I bet the dun is so lost and confused, the trading post is the only place he can think of to go.’
‘Horse smart,’ Dega noted.
‘For a horse it is showing an uncommon amount of sense, yes,’ Evelyn said. ‘But it is also a headache for us, because now it will be twice as hard to catch up to him. We might not get home for days.’
Dega imagined spending several nights with her and grew so uncomfortably warm, he broke out in a sweat.
‘My folks will have a fit. So will yours, I reckon. But we have to do it,’ Evelyn went on. ‘By morning pa will be after us. Uncle Shakespeare and Zach maybe, too. As fast as they can cover ground, it would not surprise me if they catch up to us before we are halfway to Bent’s.’ She paused. ‘Let’s see. It’s a ten-day ride. That means we can expect to see them in four or five days, maybe less depending on how worried they are, and pa is liable to be worried something fearsome.’
‘Why worry them? Why not go back? Tell father and mother, then all go trading post.’
Evelyn shook her head. ‘The idea is to catch him before something happens. Horses don’t last long in the mountains on their own. Too many accidents waiting to happen. Too many meat-eaters with a hankering for horse flesh.’
Dega had not thought of that.
‘Then there are other whites and Indians to think of. Anyone who spots him will want him for their own, and if they catch him, they are not likely to give him up without a scrape.’
‘But it our horse.’
‘You know that and I know that, but try telling a Blackfoot or a Piegan they can’t keep a horse they just caught and they are as likely as not to try and turn you into a pincushion. To them, if an animal is wandering free, then it is anybody’s to claim. You will have to kiss your horse goodbye or kill them to get it back.’
‘I not kill men over horse.’
‘You will have to change that attitude right quick if you want to last out here. What is yours is yours, and no one has the right to take it from you. But don’t you worry. If someone does get hold of the dun, my pa will do whatever it takes to get him back.’
‘Your father kill?’
‘Only if he has to.’ Evelyn reined to the right to avoid a boulder. ‘Now if my brother Zach shows up, then it is a whole different story. He will walk up to whoever has your horse, stick a pistol to their head, and tell them they have two choices.’ She smiled fondly. ‘Zach isn’t one for pussyfooting around. They will hand it over or they will die.’
There was something about Zach King, a ferocity lurking just under the surface, that Dega had to admit he found disturbing. Zach seemed to revel in conflict and combat. Dega understood that part of it was due to the Shoshone custom of counting coup on enemies. Like many tribes in the region, the Shoshones gauged valor by how many coup a man could claim. The more coup, the more esteemed the warrior.
It was not a new concept. Tribes in the region where the Nansusequa had lived did the same.
But not the Nansusequa. To them, the most esteemed warriors were those with the wisdom to smooth over conflicts and avoid bloodshed. Peace was their standard, not war. Oh, they would defend themselves when they had to, with a savagery to match their foes. But only when forced. Only when those who had raised arms against them would not be pacified.
Evelyn avoided more boulders. She also marked the position of the sun. At most they had three hours of daylight left. ‘We should start to keep our eyes skinned for a place to camp.’
‘So soon?’
‘Buttercup is about tuckered out. I’ll keep going until dark if I have to, but if
we find a spot sooner, so much the better. We will make an early start in the morning and hopefully you will be riding the dun by the end of the day.’
‘What you think best, we do,’ Dega said.
‘You are learning,’ Evelyn grinned. ‘My pa says that one of the most important lessons for a man to learn is that women are always right.’
‘Always?’
‘As near to it as counts. Or with your people do the men actually wear the britches?’
He had been doing so well, he thought. But once again Dega had no idea what she was talking about. Britches was a white word for pants. Nansusequa women always wore dresses. Nor had he ever seen Winona King in pants. ‘Wear britches important?’
‘To some it is. My pa likes to joke that once he took my ma to be his wife, he had to give all the pants he owns to her. But my pa is a great josher.’
This made even less sense to Dega, since Nate King was a giant whose clothes would never fit Winona. ‘She give dresses to him?’
Evelyn squealed with glee. ‘Mercy me, no! But wouldn’t that be a sight? My pa in a dress! I’ll have to remember to tell my brother that one. It will give him a kick.’
‘A kick is good?’
‘It means to make them laugh.’ Evelyn spied a ridge below, and the blue of flowing water. ‘Look yonder! We might be in luck. If that’s a stream, we’ve found our spot to camp.’
Dega hefted his lance. ‘I hunt if you want.’
The trees thinned, affording their first clear view of the country they had entered. Before them stretched a winding valley choked with timber. To the north and south towered imposing peaks, a few crowned with snow.
Evelyn stiffened and rose in the stirrups. ‘Do my eyes deceive me or is that what I think it is? Look there.’ She pointed to the east.
Dega accounted himself keen of sight, but he strained and beheld only trees. He said as much.
‘Look again. To the right of that real tall pine. It comes and it goes.’ Evelyn pointed. ‘There it is again!’
This time Dega saw what she saw.
Tendrils of smoke from a campfire.
Ten
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