“She is a chief’s daughter,” Magpie Woman said.
“Yes, Ke’éehe,” Speaks While Leaving said with a playful smile. “And someday, perhaps, the wife of one.”
Halfway down the hillside, the people from the camp and the inbound travelers came together in a cacophony of shouts, laughter, ululation, and song. Many of her father’s friends had come to greet the family, and she enjoyed hearing the bits of news they brought, but she did not see the one she hoped to see.
The Closed Windpipe band walked into camp and stopped in their place just south of the sun road. The families spread out in a circle, selecting their favored sites, forming their own circles and starting the work of unpacking and erecting their homes. The air was alive with the squeals of children. Hens cooed to their hatchlings as they were led off to the grazing grounds and dogs barked and yapped at everyone’s heels.
Speaks While Leaving and her mothers had just finished raising the poles for the family’s main lodge when she saw a young woman standing nearby, waiting to be noticed.
“Mouse Road?” she said. “Is that you?”
The young woman smiled and ran forward to hug her sister-in-law.
“Look at you. Wait until your brother arrives. He won’t believe how much you’ve grown.”
“He is not here?”
“No, he was on patrol for all of Hatchling Moon, but they are late coming home. He will be home soon, though, but—ah, me—Mother, look at this one! She is as tall as I.”
“She has become a beautiful young woman,” Magpie Woman agreed.
Speaks While Leaving noticed other changes, too. While over the winter Mouse Road had grown taller and leaner, while her body was that of a woman and no longer a girl’s, she had also grown in other ways. She held her head higher. She wore a woman’s dress and not a child’s smock. Her hair was not in the single plait made by a mother’s hand, but fell in two braids as a woman wore it, each one was pinned up in a loop with a large circle of etched silver. On her wrist she wore a coiled bracelet of bent hardback shell.
“Where did you get such pretty things?” Speaks While Leaving asked admiringly.
“One Who Flies got them for me. He went up to the trader’s town. I gave him the piece of chief-metal I found, but he wouldn’t use it and traded his own furs for them. The others said he was a good trader.”
The sound of pride in the young woman’s voice was unmistakable. “And how is One Who Flies?”
“Oh, Speaks While Leaving, you will be proud of me. I did just as my brother asked. I didn’t want to at first, but soon I came to enjoy teaching him. Now he speaks almost like a real person.”
“It sounds as if you have found your tongue again, as well.”
Mouse Road smiled and Speaks While Leaving caught a glimpse of the shy girl of the previous year.
“Yes,” she said. “I am not so sad anymore. I still miss my sister, but One Who Flies has been so kind and so friendly this winter, he made my sadness just melt away.”
Speaks While Leaving saw that her mother was listening to their conversation and the two women exchanged a meaningful glance. It was always dangerous when a young woman lost her heart for the first time. If Mouse Road had, and to One Who Flies no less...someone needed to speak to him of delicate matters.
“Where is One Who Flies?” Speaks While Leaving asked nonchalantly.
“He is digging.”
“Digging?”
“Yes. For more of the yellow chief-metal. At the place where you and I found the first pieces. He says the metal will open many doors.”
“Speaks While Leaving,” Magpie Woman said, chiding. “We must raise our lodges before nightfall. Your grandmother has spent too many nights in the open already.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Can I help?” Mouse Road asked.
“Of course,” Magpie Woman replied. “Your brother speaks highly of your abilities at lodge-raising.”
The first chores were to raise the lodgepoles and their covers. Then the grass was plucked from the lodge floors, the rectangular hearthpits were dug out, and the ground was swept down to the hard earth. Then the furnishings were unpacked and set up in the family side of each lodge. Beddings were unrolled, unfolded, and laid out between the furniture. In the guest areas, blankets and hides were laid down. By then, the sacks and parfleches full of food and other goods were unpacked and ready to be stored, all neatly and orderly, each item in its accustomed place.
The women worked swiftly, sharing stories as they worked. Mouse Road told of her winter’s events and Speaks While Leaving gave her news of her brother. In a little over two hands of time the family’s homestead was set to rights.
Still, One Who Flies had not arrived.
“He stays out there all day,” Mouse Road explained. “I bring him food sometimes. He forgets. Shall I take you to him?”
Magpie Woman spoke up. “You should see after your mother. She’s been without you all afternoon.”
Old enough to suspect she was being gotten rid of, but young enough to still obey without question, Mouse Road, after another hug from her brother’s wife, ran off toward her home.
“You go, too,” Magpie Woman said. “Go find him. Talk to him. Make sure all is well and proper.”
“I am sure he has done nothing inappropriate.”
Her mother did not look so confident. “Men can be stupid,” was all she would say.
Speaks While Leaving went to the flocks where their whistlers had already been taken. She whistled, two low notes and two high ones.
“Two Cuts!”
She heard his answer and saw him trotting across the plain toward her. She and he had ridden many long miles since she had captured him, only the summer before when the cloud fell, bringing One Who Flies to the People. Two Cuts had proven to be a fine addition to her flock.
She mounted him bareback. He let her settle into position and at her command he moved gently into motion. He carried her across the rolling landscape like a canoe over gentle waters. The site of the gold find was miles to the south, in the foothills of the Sheep Mountains, but it was an easy ride. The grasses here on the upper prairie were short and the creeks and streams easy to ford. She rode and felt the warm wind on her face, on her neck, like the touch of fine cloth on her skin. She could smell the summer’s heat like a perfume in the air. The sun, tending now toward evening, lit the world with a light that was still bright, but had lost its noonday harshness.
They climbed up into the foothills and at last she saw the lone tamarack tree up on its ridge of rocky land.
She gasped, and Two Cuts slowed, sensing his rider’s distress.
The slope beneath the tree had been covered by golden grass, broken only by the knotted roots of the towering tree and the outcroppings of pale stone. Now, near the base of the tree, three deep trenches scarred the land and the dark earth was laid bare to bake in the sun. At the end of one trench, One Who Flies toiled, swinging a pick to break the ground.
“Nóheto,” she said, and Two Cuts swept into motion.
“One Who Flies,” she shouted and saw his pale-haired head poke up out of the trench like a squirrel-that-barks. She saw his broad smile and his wave, but she could not feel any joy in this meeting.
The three trenches were deep. They cut down through black soil, red dust, and bright stone. Each began at the rock where she found the first large nugget, but each struck out in a different direction.
“What are you doing?” she said in the Trader’s Tongue.
Still grinning, One Who Flies climbed up out of his handiwork. “I’m digging,” he said using the language of the People. “I’m digging for the yellow chief-metal.”
“But you mustn’t,” she said. “You must not. This is...this is...” She looked at the torn land around her. “It is wrong.”
His expression told her that he did not understand her anguish. She was not sure she understood it herself. But when she felt the touch of the ma’heono on her mind like the light f
rom a hundred suns, she knew her instincts were right.
Her vision brightened and the world around her faded. She saw One Who Flies as through a mist, a brilliant fog that deepened and spread. She saw the concern in his furrowed brow and saw his lips move, speaking as he came to help her, his hands trying to catch her as she slipped from her seat on her whistler’s back and slid down to the ground. She saw him speak, but heard nothing, for the pressure of the spirit powers was already within her. It blanked out her world and carried her to another place where time and distance did not matter. In the world of the ma’heono, things were real, but not real; they were true, but not in their true shape. Since childhood they had come for her and shown her visions of what had been and what was yet to be. She had long ago learned not to fight them, so now she gave herself up to the light, to the chill. She tried only to force her body to say a few calming words to One Who Flies who did not understand such things, and then she was among the powers and spirits.
The world was white and without form. She waited and saw what seemed to be a cloud of rainbow gnats: zipping, multi-hued shadows. They spiraled and whorled until, one by one, they began to slow and coalesce into a shape, something white and pale against the brightness of the vision world. Then, like a ghost out of a dream, it solidified and became a white buffalo, the great spirit woman who fed and cared for the People. White Buffalo Woman stepped forward and wherever she stepped, the world reappeared, racing outward from her hooves like ripples in a tranquil pond. By the time White Buffalo Woman had reached her, the world was complete. She turned and showed Speaks While Leaving the vision.
There was a lodge so tall that its over-the-smokes were lost in the clouds. The skin of the lodge was painted with all sorts of symbols—trees, grass, rivers, buffalo, antelope, birds, and grasshoppers. In the door of the lodge stood a woman. Her skin was all brown, her hair and her eyes raven-black, and she stood like a timber-deer in the shadowed oval of the doorway, calm but wary.
Six men came up to the lodge and each wore the regalia of one of the soldier societies. Kit Fox, Crazy Dogs, Little Bowstrings, Wolf Men, Red Shields, Elkhorn Scrapers—all were there. One by one they went up to the brown woman with the long black hair and put out their hands, but she only shook her dark head and turned them away. When the last soldier came, he had in his hands a handful of summer grass and dried flowers, their heads heavy with seed. When he came to the dark woman, she gave him a stone in exchange for the grasses and flowers. The dark woman smiled and she turned and fled into the shadowy interior of the lodge.
The soldier turned away with his stone and the other soldiers gathered around. They all reached out and touched the stone, and as they did, it fell on the ground and broke open like an egg. Within it was a nugget of gold like the one Speaks While Leaving had found, but as she and the others watched, it began to change shape. It became first a rifle, then a large gun with wheels on it. It grew and became a boat with smoke that came up out of two stacks in the middle, and then became a chair like she had seen vé’hó’e use, except heavy and ornate. Finally, it became a shield and a helmet like the ones the Iron Shirt Men wore in years long ago.
Speaks While Leaving turned to White Buffalo Woman. The great spirit was now in the form of a woman with long, loose black hair and a dress of whitened deerskin.
I don’t understand, Speaks While Leaving said to her guide, but White Buffalo Woman only reached out with her hand. In her open palm was a nugget of gold. It shone with a warm light and the light grew to fill her vision. It engulfed her, breached her mind, and carried her away from the spirit realm and back to the world of the People.
One Who Flies knelt at her side, worry creasing his features.
“I am back now,” she said as she sat up.
“What happened? Are you all right?”
“I am fine,” she said. She moved to stand but was still light-headed from her journey.
“What happened? It was like you were asleep or dreaming, but you were speaking—”
“Did you hear me?” she asked him urgently. “Did you understand what I was saying?”
“Yes,” he said. “Every word.”
“Good,” she said, relaxing. “Then you see why you must stop your digging.”
“Stop? No, I don’t. Why should I stop?”
“You are not doing it properly.”
He laughed, embarrassed. “I know I could be doing it better,” he said, pointing to his trenches. “I can’t seem to find the path of the metal. I am a poor prospector.”
“No,” she said, “you are not going about it with the proper respect.”
He sat back on his heels, baffled. “Respect? What respect? I just have to find the right place to dig. I can’t get to the gold unless I dig for it.”
She touched his arm to calm his agitation. “But it must be done in the right way and with the right people. We must wait for the rest of the Council to arrive so that I can tell them of this vision. They will decide the best course for you to follow. Until then, though, you should fill in these holes.”
“Fill them in?”
“Yes,” she said. “To put things back the way they were before you began.”
One Who Flies stared at her as if she had asked him to swallow the moon.
“Just until the full Council can assemble,” she added.
“Fill them in,” he said, still disbelieving.
“Yes. Of course, no one can tell another what to do, but I think that would be best.”
Still he stared at her and so dumbly that she thought perhaps the ma’heono had come upon him, too, but then he threw his arms up and began to shake his head slowly.
“I do not understand you sometimes,” he said.
She laughed. “Perhaps not, but I understand you very well. Mouse Road was right. You speak almost as well as a real person.”
George watched Speaks While Leaving ride back toward the camp. He turned and looked at the results of five long days’ effort: three exploratory trenches, four feet deep and about twenty feet long. He clenched his fists and felt the hot pain of open blisters crack on his palms and fingers. He felt the grit that cloaked his shoulders and the dirt beneath his nails. He felt the pressure of the westering sun on his burnt back.
I am so close, he said to himself. I know I am. I’ve missed in three directions. The seam of rock can only lay in the fourth.
He looked at the sun and judged there to be at least three hands of daylight remaining. He walked over to his tools and, wincing at the pain in his hands, picked them up. He walked around to the far side of the exposed length of quartz and granite.
She’ll come around when I show up with an armload of gold.
He swung the pick and broke the ground for a new trench. He pulled up the sod and then shoveled aside the dark earth beneath. When the soil turned pale and hard, he took up the pick again and cracked the earth apart, clod by clod. He dug a hole that was knee-deep. He widened it and lengthened it so that he could stand on the bottom and still have room to swing the pick.
“Where are you?” he asked, looking up at the rock that stood tall out of the ground only a few yards away. “Where do you go?”
When the hole was shoulder-deep, his walker chuffed in warning. He stood up straight to see out of the hole.
The sky had started to fill with color, nightly cobalt seeping in to wash away the bone-white pallor of day. The sun hung on the horizon like some fiery fruit, immense and Promethean. Its orange light skittered across the landscape, leaping from hilltop to hilltop, and on one height a mile or so away, he saw two dark riders. Their clothing was dark and they had painted their skin black. They seemed to soak up the light of setting sun. They wore their hair loose, which was not the custom among the People. At that distance, George could not make out their faces, but he saw that they both carried one of the long, feathered, crook-ended lances like Laughs like a Woman owned when he was a Contrary: Thunder Bows.
George stared at them for a while, trying to see who
they might be, and they stared back, not moving from their place on the hilltop. He climbed up out of the pit, his walker chuffed again, and as the sun slid down behind the purpled horizon, the men turned and rode off, disappearing down the far side of the hill.
George watched as the light slowly left the world, but he did not see the men ride up over any of the more distant ridges. As the new moon, a waxing fingernail of light, chased the departed sun, he shivered.
They must have traveled back to camp along the lowlands, he told himself. Nothing mysterious in that.
He turned back to the hole he had dug. It lay before him, open, dark, grave-like.
I am committed now, he thought. Whoever they were, they’ll report back. I’d better not show up empty-handed.
He spent the night curled up against his walker, lulled to sleep by her deep, wind-river breaths and the gurgling music of her stomach. At dawn, ignoring his sharpening hunger, he began again, and in short time his hands rang with the concussion of pick on stone. He got down on hands and knees and cleared the dirt away from the rock. It was not long before his fingers found the limits of the boulder. It was not the same seam of granite, then, but simply a pebble off its shoulder.
“Hellfire,” George shouted as he wiped the gritty sweat from his brow with an even grittier forearm. “Damnation.”
He looked at the jagged torso-sized piece of quartz-veined stone.
“I must be getting close, though.”
Using his pick, he levered the stone up out of the ground and onto its face. It hit the soil with a hollow thump. The dry earth fell away and there, in the dim light of morning, George caught a glimpse of gold. He knelt, brushed at the stone, and saw, running the length of the yard-long rock, a finger-thick vein of yellow metal.
He stared at it until the fire in his lungs reminded him to breathe. This was what he had sought: evidence of an extended deposit beyond the small vein visible up at the main outcropping.
“We have it,” he said, and looked up at the granite where Speaks While Leaving found her nugget. At least fifteen yards intervened between this stone and the top of the hill. George calculated quickly and guessed that the deposit might easily yield several pounds of gold.
The Spirit of Thunder Page 12