The other men joined in the laughter. Storm Arriving pointed to Issues Forth.
“Stand up on your whistler’s back and take a look. Tell me what you see.”
Issues Forth balanced on his whistler’s spine and stood so that he could peer above the tall grass.
“I...do not see anything.”
“Open your eyes,” Red Hat said.
Issues Forth smiled at the teasing and began again. “I do not see anything unusual. Just the long slope down to the river and the land on the other side.”
“No men? No riders?”
“No.”
“Do you see any smoke?”
“No.”
“Not vé’hó’e, then,” Red Hat said. “Who else could it be?”
Storm Arriving climbed up on his own whistler, standing slowly so as not to expose their hiding place.
The land declined gently away from their vantage, down to the long, twisting cleft that held the White Water. Beyond the river, the land rolled onward in low rises to the horizon. Storm Arriving could see the hands of the morning breeze caress the tall grass in hypnotic waves that ran unhindered across the flawless vista...or nearly flawless.
“There,” he said, pointing. “See it?”
Issues Forth squinted. “Yes,” he said.
Down along the river’s run, the ripples in the grass crossed over two lines where there was no grass: two scars in the growth that, as they watched, grew longer.
Two men, Issues Forth signed.
No, Storm Arriving signed in return. Two groups of men.
Near one of the lines three pheasants flew up out of the tall grass, wings whistling through the air. Another shot was fired and one of the pheasants fell. The lines split and extended out to search for their quarry. Storm Arriving heard the hunters talk to one another. He crouched down and spoke to the rest of the patrol.
“Wolf People. Ten of them. I wonder what they are doing here.”
“Hunting pheasant,” Issues Forth said.
Storm Arriving rolled his eyes. “I mean what are they doing here?”
Red Hat scoffed. “What does it matter?” he asked. “Soon they will all be dead.”
“No,” Storm Arriving said. “I think it is important to know why they are here.”
“Why?” Red Hat asked, and proceeded to enumerate the possibilities. “They are not here on a whistler raid—the Wolf People ride the domesticated elk, like the vé’hó’e. And they aren’t hunting buffalo, not on foot.” He appealed to the other soldiers. “They must be here to spy for the bluecoats, and are shooting some pheasants to fill their bellies.”
Men murmured their agreement. Lost Heart Wolf and Issues Forth stood slack-jawed, waiting to see what Storm Arriving would say in rebuttal.
“The Wolf People have been our bitter enemies forever,” Storm Arriving said. “We drove them across the Big Greasy in the time of our great-grandfathers. But now some have come here again. It is probably just as Red Hat says—they are scouts for the bluecoats—but if they are, I want to know why. Why did the bluecoats send them? What do the bluecoats want to know?”
The group considered the arguments. Silently, and one by one, the men signed their agreement to Storm Arriving’s proposal.
“Prisoners, then,” Red Hat said. “And once we know all there is to know?”
“Once we know why they are here,” Storm Arriving said, “it will be clear what we should do next.”
They prepared their war mounts for action. Another reconnaissance showed that the group of trespassers had converged again into two groups moving parallel with the river. The soldiers put away arrows and took out clubs and ropes. Knives were ready, if needed, and Storm Arriving knew that some of the Wolf People would probably be killed in the attack. As long as a few were left to tell their tale, though, he would be satisfied.
Storm Arriving spoke to their two young soldiers. “This is your first taste of battle. Do not go first. Hold back and learn. Come in to assist any in need.” He looked at the group. Eight men, ready for war: eyes bright, limbs taut. A sense of urgent potential filled the circle of trampled grass.
“Nóheto.”
From a crouch their war mounts leapt up and ran. They held their heads up to see over the tall grass and held their forelimbs out before them to push aside the waving stalks. The soldiers yipped and whooped as they tore down the slope, guiding their mounts with pressure from heel or toe. Storm Arriving saw the paths in the grass stop in their westward progression.
“They’ve turned back in their tracks!” he shouted.
They rode in fast. Storm Arriving held a war club in one hand and a coil of buffalo-hair rope in the other. The pale grass stung his legs as they flew through it. The whistlers sang out and changed their color to match the gold that surrounded them. The pack of riders split to surround their quarry. Storm Arriving guided his mount toward one of the paths in the grass. He heard a gunshot. The soldiers yipped as they all closed in. He swung onto the Wolf People’s trail, into the area of trampled grass. He saw them, up ahead, several of them, running, but...
“Hold!” he shouted. “Kit Foxes! Hold!”
The riders all swerved in to form a circle. They slowed, then stopped. Before them, in an area of flattened grass, stood an old man, an old woman, two boys, three girls, a man and two women. Not scouts, not warriors.
A family.
All of the soldiers stared at this unexpected discovery, Storm Arriving included. By their dress he could see that they were, indeed, of the Wolf People. The man wore large ball-and-cone earrings and a headpiece of deer-tail hair. His leggings were brightly banded with blue and white, and he wore a dotted red shirt of thin vé’ho’e fabric. The women wore vé’ho’e-style dresses of dark cloth and had little jewelry or decoration. The adults looked thin and the children were pot-bellied from improper food. They all looked very frightened. The man held his gun in his hands, ready, but not aimed. It was an old rifle—a single-shot style like the bluecoats used. Storm Arriving doubted the man had had time to reload it since his last shot.
“I am Storm Arriving, of the People,” he said, nudging his whistler into the center of the circle. When it was obvious that the Wolf People did not understand him, he said it again, using the language of the Inviters. “We are Kit Fox soldiers on patrol, and you are trespassers in Alliance land. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
The man put the butt of his rifle on the ground and leaned on the barrel like an old man upon a walking stick. “I am called Knee Prints by the Bank. This is my wife and her family. We are here looking for a new place to live.”
“Go look somewhere else,” Red Hat said. “Your lands are across the Big Greasy.”
“Those are not our lands anymore,” Knee Prints by the Bank said. “The white men have taken them.”
“What do you mean?” Storm Arriving asked. “How? Did you war with them?”
“No,” Knee Prints by the Bank said. “The chiefs of the white men made a new law. This law said our land was no longer our land, but that if I made my mark on a piece of paper, we could use a small piece of it for farming.” He lifted his rifle and set it back down. “I am not a farmer,” he said. “I do not know how. So we have come here, back across the Big Greasy, hoping to find a new home.”
“Well, you will not find one here,” Red Hat said. “The Wolf People are not welcome in Alliance land.”
Knee Prints by the Bank looked up at them and Storm Arriving saw the sadness in his eyes. “Do you not understand what I am telling you? There are no more Wolf People. There are just the few who have stayed, the many who have died, and those like us, who have scattered in search of another home. The Wolf People are no more.”
Red Hat took a breath to speak but held his tongue at a motion from Storm Arriving.
“Why should we help you?” he asked. “After generations of war with you, how can the People call you friends?”
Knee Prints by the Bank’s gaze hardened, and Storm Arriving s
aw the old warrior within the man before him. “You can call us friends,” he said, “because we are your enemies no longer.”
“Who is?”
He picked up his rifle and pointed to the east, to the Horse Nations.
“They are,” he said, “and if you will feed my family this night, tomorrow I will show you why.”
They took the family to a place some distance east, where there were trees and shelter from the coming rains. Some of the Kit Fox went out hunting and came back with a small antelope they’d been able to kill. Storm Arriving looked on as the children were offered helpings of food. They were known as the Wolf People because of their fierceness and tenacity. Now, watching one of the boys take a chunk of roasted meat with nervous hands and run off to eat it in solitude, Storm Arriving saw that misfortune had imparted a different similarity.
Before dawn, when the new day’s sun still lay dozing beneath the horizon, Storm Arriving stopped pretending to sleep. He crouched down next to Red Hat and poked him.
“What do you want?” Red Hat grumbled.
“We go.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Just because you cannot sleep, it does not mean that I cannot.”
“Come,” Storm Arriving insisted.
Red Hat sighed. “As you wish.”
Storm Arriving told the picket guard that they were leaving and in a short time, with the bleary-eyed Knee Prints by the Bank alongside them, they rode off toward the Big Greasy.
Knee Prints by the Bank was unsteady on whistler-back, so Storm Arriving set an easy pace across the night-shrouded landscape. They traveled in near-silence, the only sounds the waking birds, the wind of their passage, and the cushioned thump-thump-thump of their whistlers’ feet.
Knee Prints by the Bank, so talkative yesterday, was sullen. It might have been the early hour, but Storm Arriving kept a sharp eye to possible ambush, just in case.
The Big Greasy was on their left hand as they traveled south. Its waters were dark and quiet. Slow, smooth ripples were the only hint that it was a river of water and not some black road of polished stone. Across the river was the land the vé’hó’e had named after the vanquished branch of the Inviters: Yankton. This was a dangerous area of the borderlands, and they were all alert to possible danger.
“Here,” Knee Prints by the Bank said, speaking at last. “I remember this stand of sweet-sap trees, and that rise of land ahead. This is where we swam across the river. It is not far from here.”
“What is it that you think is so important to show us?” Storm Arriving asked again.
“You must see for yourself.”
They rode on and Storm Arriving began to wish that they had brought more of the Kit Foxes with them. Then he chastised himself.
You are letting his mystery affect you, he told himself. This man would not let himself be trapped, not alone and with his family behind him.
They continued, and the dawn began to break in imperceptible waves of subtle color. The sky paled and brightened and at last the limb of the sun overtopped the rim of the world, sending its light out across the land.
Storm Arriving squinted into the glare. They all held a hand up to shield their eyes as they rode up over a low rise. Ahead, Storm Arriving saw a structure and through the brightness of the rising sun caught a glimpse of movement.
A man in front of them shouted—an alarm by its tone—and Storm Arriving tried to resolve the cluster of shadows and reflections into an image.
In the first heartbeat he saw wooden lodges and cloth tents along the near bank. In the second he saw vé’hó’e, bluecoats and others, all shouting and running towards them, rifles in hand.
“Turn around!” he commanded. “Back! Back! Nóheto!”
He turned his whistler. Gunfire peppered the air. He looked back and saw Red Hat and Knee Prints by the Bank riding like spirits out of the dawn’s light. There was more gunfire and he heard the balls zip and snap past him, tearing the air and the grass and the turf around them. They ran on, and when the third round of reports crackled behind them, the shots could not cover the distance. With a sigh of relief, Storm Arriving looked back.
Red Hat’s whistler was riderless.
“When did he fall?”
“I do not know,” Knee Prints by the Bank answered. “I could only think of holding on.”
Storm Arriving pulled his whistler to a halt. He gathered in the loose mount and handed over the halter rope. “I am going back. Wait here.”
Knee Prints by the Bank’s pallid face and shaking hands said that he would. Storm Arriving toed his mount into motion.
He laid low along the whistler’s spine and guided it back along the path of trampled grass and kicked-up dirt that they had made in their flight. He unslung his bow from across his shoulder as he rode and put an arrow to the string in anticipation of danger. His whistler had paled its skin and it ran like a tow-colored ghost across the rolling prairie.
“Slow,” he said as they approached the top of a gentle rise. “Stop.”
His feet firmly in the loops of the riding harness, he stood slowly and looked over the top of the shoulder of land. The trail of their escape stood out like three shiny stripes in the knee-high grass. Next to one of the paths was a man-sized depression. The land beyond was clear up to a further rise. Storm Arriving dismounted and walked on ahead.
Red Hat lay in a bed of summer-slick grass. His blood colored the golden stems in crimson arcs, having sprayed out from the hole that had been torn in the side of his neck. The Kit Fox soldier’s arm and chest were shiny with the gouts he had attempted to stem but now, no blood flowed from the wound, no breath passed his lips, and no life lived in his dark but vacant eyes. Storm Arriving put down his bow and picked up his friend. As he carried him to his whistler, he sang the death song that Red Hat had been unable to voice.
Nothing lives long,
Only the earth
And the mountains.
He laid his friend’s body across his whistler’s spine and went back for his bow. As he leaned down to pick it up, he heard hoofbeats coming over the rise: bluecoats giving chase.
He did not run, but stood in the space where Red Hat had fallen. With arrow to bowstring, he waited, and when the two riders topped the rise, he let fly.
The arrow passed clear through the chest of the first bluecoat and the man toppled from his saddle like a child’s doll. The second bluecoat reined in and aimed his rifle. The weapon fired and Storm Arriving heard the bullet slash through the grass behind him. He sung as he pulled a second arrow from his quiver.
Without moving, his own death song emerging through gritted teeth, he aimed as the bluecoat struggled to load another cartridge in his rifle. The vé’ho’e cried out as the arrow pierced his forearm, pinning it to his chest. A breath later, the second arrow struck him below the collarbone, twisting him around and tumbling him to the grass.
Storm Arriving ran up the gentle slope, a third arrow at the ready. The horses fled at his approach but he did not care. They were of no use to him.
The first bluecoat was dead. The second lay on his back, tugging at the arrows with a panic-weakened hand. The dying man looked up at Storm Arriving, his panic turning to terror. Storm Arriving sent his final arrow just to the right of the bluecoat’s breastbone, piercing the heart, and the man was dead.
The sun was a bit higher, and the glare off the quiet river had lessened. Over the top of the rise Storm Arriving could see more of what Knee Prints by the Bank had brought them there to see.
He saw a path of wooden boards extending out over the water, suspended by upright logs. He saw boats—large, flat, wide vé’hó’e boats and not the slender craft the tribes used—tied up alongside the walkway and anchored out in the river’s flow like giant stepping stones. On two of them were the beginnings of heavy-timbered towers. On both sides of the river were tents and buildings and piles of supplies taller than both.
They are coming, he said to himself. Again, the
vé’hó’e are coming.
He retrieved his arrows and took the bluecoats’ rifles and cartridge bags. He checked them for anything else of value, found a ring and a silver chain, and then with two quick slices of his knife he took his scalps. Unlike previous victories, he felt no joy in this coup. This time, despite his success, he could only think of one thing.
The vé’hó’e lied to us. They are coming again.
Whistlers sang and flashed their colors in excited greeting. Walkers bellowed their challenges to any and all who would hear. The Closed Windpipe band crested the last ridge and Speaks While Leaving looked down on the camp of the People.
The basin of land was surrounded by the curve of the Little Sheep River and a long ridge of land. This was one of her favorite campsites: plenty of water, hills for children to play upon, and forests filled with fruits and berries.
They were not the last to arrive—Speaks While Leaving saw several empty sections in the grand circle—but they were certainly not the first. Walkers down in camp roared back, challenging the newcomers in return, and across the river to the west, the pale flocks of whistlers ran across the grazing grounds like a heavy liquid, flowing this way and that in their excitement. The people, too, were excited and already several groups were walking toward the new arrivals, eager to share gossip and the winter’s news.
There were many people Speaks While Leaving wanted to visit, but foremost in her mind was One Who Flies. She saw in the west the camp of the Tree People, and searched for the hail and handprints of the lodge belonging to her husband’s mother.
“You look for him like a lovelorn girl,” her grandmother said as she rode by in her travois.
“Ke’éehe,” Speaks While Leaving said in a scolding tone. “I am only worried about him.”
“Tsh. Worried. Then you and your husband should have gone to visit.”
“Mother,” Magpie Woman said. “It would not have been proper for them to visit anyone. Not in their first season of marriage.”
“Aah,” the old woman said with a wave of her hand. “Proper. I am too old to worry about what is proper. If she worries, she should visit.”
The Spirit of Thunder Page 11