After the Thunder (13 page)

She felt a clutch at her heart.

“So,” she teased, to try to stop it, “you miss me when I’m not around? You get lonesome when there’s
no one to spy on and say rude things to?”

He smiled, but he looked uncomfortable, and his shoulders tightened. He was regretting that he’d talked about his feelings at all.

“I know exactly what you mean,” she said quickly. “I learned that same thing when I first went to live at the ranch, when I met Emily and Maggie and began to see what it would be like to have friends, real friends for the first time in my life. Within days, Emily was my very first best friend, and I felt like I’d known her forever.”

“So that made it even worse that you both loved Tay.”

He made the flat statement knowingly, yet there was questioning in his eyes. He wanted to hear the whole story from her. And why not? He had been there, he had taken her hand, on that terrible night when Tay never chose her to dance.

And he wanted to kiss her ever since that long-ago time.

So she sat down, then stretched out to her full length in the cool grass beneath the moon, and looked back into the past.

“I had thought I would marry Tay Nashoba for years and years—since the day he came home from the War,” she said. “And the minute I first thought it, right there in the middle of the street in Tuskahoma, I blurted it out to him and told him to wait until I could grow up. From that moment on, Tay was my dream of my future.”

To her total surprise, Cotannah began to pour out her heart—about Tay and about Emily, about her mother’s death and how she’d always missed her, and, to her own deep shock, even the details of the twin horrors of Headmaster Haynes and being kidnapped by the
bandidos
.
How could she hope to win his respect and approval if she told him all this?

But Walks-With-Spirits stretched out beside her and listened without saying a word, only making a sound now and then to let her know that she should go on. When she was done, at last, they stayed as they were for a long time. Finally, she turned and looked at him where he still lay with his hands tucked behind his head as she was. The moon was dropping low in the sky.

“Thank you for listening,” she said, a little embarrassed. “I’ve never told all that to anyone before. So many bad things have happened to me that I always refuse to talk about them.”

He smiled at her, his eyes golden in the waning moonlight.

“You’re welcome.”

“I never meant to destroy your peace even more with all my old turmoil,” she said.

“You didn’t. You brought yourself peace, instead.”

She nodded slowly, surprised, as his words sank in, that they held so much truth.

“You’re right,” she said, “I did.”

His next remark deepened her surprise to consternation.

“Next time we talk I’ll tell you my childhood and how I came to the New Nation.”

Next time! He wanted to talk with her again. Her breath caught. He might want to kiss her again, too.

A look passed between them then, a new kind of look that held no judgment, no reserve from him and no flirting from her. A look of knowing, as if they knew each other now, although he had told her very little.

A look that shook her to the bone.

“I … I need to get on back to Tall Pine,” she said.
“It’ll be morning soon, and neither of us needs to give any more grist to the gossip mill.”

He got up, then, and so did she.

She felt such a warmth in the air between them, but it wasn’t the tension that precedes a kiss. It was more the feeling between friends.

He felt it, too—she knew because of the way he smiled and said, “Go safely, Friend.”

She smiled back at him and began walking away, but the word caught and held her as if he had taken her heart in his hand.

Because it was right, they were friends, he was her first new friend, real friend, since … Emily. But how could a real friend of hers possibly be a man? A man who kissed her like no man she’d ever known.

Halfway to Tall Pine, a realization hit her.

Walks-With-Spirits had been her friend from that first day’s supper. He wouldn’t have censured her or criticized her behavior if he didn’t care something about her; he wouldn’t have told her she was degrading herself if it hadn’t bothered him to see it. Another thought followed that one like thunder after a bolt of lightning.

He had been her friend from the very beginning two years ago because during the dance he had asked her needle-sharp questions about Tay. To try to make her think about Tay’s actions and feelings toward her. If she had listened to him and used her head, she might have saved herself a lot of grief.

During the dance.

She tucked her hair behind her ear and began to race away from him.

The dance Walks-With-Spirits had danced with her, the dance he had also predicted they would share again someday, was the Wedding Dance.

I
t was an hour after daybreak when she slipped into the house through the back door because she had wandered slowly across the fields in the dawn light, thinking about everything and feeling how the sliding stones of her consciousness had settled. Listening to her inside spirits, as Walks-With-Spirits had put it. The talk with him had helped her immensely, but she was proud of the fact that she’d known when she went to see him that she would take charge of her life. Now she would do it. There would be no more men like Jacob anywhere near her, ever again.

The sound of voices coming from down the hall startled her, and she closed the door silently behind her and stopped still until she could know who was up and about. She didn’t want to see anyone right now, not even Emily. She wanted to go to her room and remember Walks-With-Spirits’s kiss one more time and then sleep.

“We’re here to petition you, Chief Nashoba,” a rough male voice said. “You must tell the witch called Walks-With-Spirits to leave the Nation. He must be gone before Grandfather Sun comes and goes three times more.”

Cotannah’s stomach lurched. The voice was truly vicious.

It was coming from Tay’s study, the large room across from the parlor where he conducted a great deal of tribal business. She glanced through the window lights on each side of the front door at the opposite end of the hallway from where she stood and glimpsed several saddled horses tied in the front yard.

Tay’s rich tones sounded then, answering the rude command with a calm as great as that man’s agitation, saying, “There’re as many of the People who believe Walks-With-Spirits is an
alikchi
as there are who think he’s a witch.”

“Last night he proved what he is!” the man shouted. “We saw that he possesses strong medicine and that it’s black medicine. Jacob Charley is young and strong, yet the witch whipped him soundly, quickly. Too quickly for a human to do.”

Someone else spoke up.

“The witch said that Jacob Charley, one of our most prominent citizens, does not deserve to live, and he put a death curse on him. Next thing we know, the witch will kill the innocent Jacob, by his hand or by his incantations, if we don’t run him out of the Nation.”

“Seems to me that it was Jacob who threatened to shoot Walks-With-Spirits like he did the coyote,” Tay said mildly. “Maybe it’s Walks-With-Spirits who’s in danger.”

“Ha! Didn’t you see? Didn’t you hear? Jacob is in danger from the curse!”

Then several voices spoke out all at once, all angry. Immediately, then, came the sounds of chairs scraping on the floor and footsteps. Cotannah dashed down the hallway and into the empty parlor.

She didn’t want that bunch of fanatics to see her—why, they’d probably say she should be sentenced to a
whipping for calling the dangerous Walks-With-Spirits down on poor, innocent Jacob’s head!

Standing against the wall, she held her breath until the group of five men, followed by the ever-courteous Tay, had filed past the parlor and out the front door onto the veranda. There Tay talked to them for a moment more—she could see him through the window—and then they mounted their horses and rode out of the yard.

Tay, frowning thoughtfully, came back into the house, and she stepped out into the hallway to meet him. He raised his eyebrows in surprise and smiled at her.

“Tay, I am so sorry about all that happened last evening,” she said. “It’s my fault that these people are coming here putting you in such an impossible position.”

“Cotannah,” he said, “a Principal Chief is in an impossible position the minute he’s elected.”

“Maybe so, but those men sounded so adamant about forcing you to run Walks-With-Spirits out of the Nation! By acting like a stupid flirting fool, I’ve caused all this controversy about him to be stirred up again.”

He took her hand in both of his and patted it consolingly.

“No, none of this is your fault,” he said. “Walks-With-Spirits is always the subject of controversy because people don’t understand him. Come with me to the kitchen for coffee, and I’ll tell you about the first time I ever saw him.”

“You’re as gallant as ever, Tay,” she said, as they walked down the hall side by side. “But right now that can’t distract me. I’m too worried that that bunch will try to force Walks-With-Spirits out of the Nation themselves, when they find out that you won’t do it—they sounded so mean and vicious when they said the word, ‘witch.’”

Then a worse thought hit her.

“Oh, Tay, do you think Jacob would try to make good on that threat to shoot him the way he did his pet …”

She paused, practically hearing Walks-With-Spirits’s voice saying that the animals were his friends, not his pets, “… the way he shot Taloa?”

“No,” he said, and he sounded so calm and sure that he allayed her fears instantly. “Now that Jacob’s said that in front of witnesses, he’d be scared to carry it out because Olmun, his father, believes Walks-With-Spirits is a true shaman, and Olmun’s money has always supported Jacob.”

He stepped back for her to go ahead of him into the kitchen, but she stopped in the hallway.

“Thanks for the offer of coffee, but I think I’ll just go to my room now,” she said. “I want to ask you one more thing, though. What was Walks-With-Spirits saying to you after the fight last night?”

“He was telling me in no uncertain terms to keep a closer eye on you, Miss ’Tannah,” he said, smiling down at her affectionately. “He’s afraid you’ll get into even bigger trouble next time.”

She didn’t even feel the resentment she usually felt at being treated like a child; instead she felt a thrilling warmth that Walks-With-Spirits was so protective of her. But that was because she had this new strong, calm confidence. Because she was different now.

“There won’t be any next time,” she said, smiling back at him. “I did a lot more thinking than sleeping last night, and I’ve changed my whole outlook. I won’t be getting into trouble anymore, I promise you.”

Surprise, and then gladness, flashed across his face.

“I’ll count on that when it comes to men like Jacob,” he said. “But it’s hard for me to imagine you, the famous
Cotannah Chisk-Ko, not attracting any trouble at all.”

They both laughed, and she gave him a quick hug before she turned and ran up the stairs. Life was full of irony. Two years ago, she would never have dreamed that Tay and Emily, who had betrayed her, would already be her best friends again.

Except for Walks-With-Spirits, who she had thought felt only scorn for her. Would he turn out to be her best friend of all?

For most of Saturday and Sunday, she spent her time alone, getting accustomed to the rearrangement of thoughts and attitudes in her head. Her promise to Tay further confirmed her new resolve to take herself in hand—she could already tell that it wouldn’t be hard to do.

And that was because of what Walks-With-Spirits had done for her. In some mysterious way, he had made her believe in herself and her instincts again the way she did when she was ten years old and eleven and twelve and thirteen, before she’d ever gone to the Academy in Arkansas, before she’d ever seen Headmaster Haynes.

Monday morning she was up before dawn, leaning out her window to breathe in the crisp air of the frosty fall morning that called to her like a song. It was cold, she thought, shivering in her nightgown as she ran to the armoire and pulled out her beloved old cord breeches that always seemed too heavy for the Texas weather and the loose jacket that matched; an outfit of Cade’s when he was a boy.

When she was growing up, wearing them had made her feel closer to her often-absent brother, and on this glorious morning the thought of him actually made her
smile. He’d be surprised when he found out she didn’t need him to boss her around anymore.

This would be fun, riding out and seeing the frost on the leaves, watching the fall coming to the trees and mountains. This was one thing she loved about the Nation over the ranch in Texas: the definite change of the seasons and the always-shifting weather.

She grabbed a faded cap knitted from red wool that someone—maybe some ancestor of Tay’s—had left on the top shelf and stuffed her hair up under it so she didn’t have to mess with it and miss the sunrise, ran from the room and down the stairs on tiptoe, hoping no one would wake. She didn’t want any company on this early-morning ride but if she ran across Walks-With-Spirits somewhere out there in the woods, now that would be fine.

Riding Pretty Feather across the open fields in the cold, fall morning, galloping toward the bright pink eastern horizon, got her blood pumping even higher and, as the sun rose and lit the sparkling land, she rode all the way to the boundary of Tay and Emily’s property, the narrow, swift-running Tulli Creek that had to be forded on the way to Tuskahoma. Pretty Feather must’ve caught Cotannah’s exuberant mood—she raced straight on into the water and began dipping and tossing her head the way she always did when she wanted to play, throwing cold water back onto Cotannah every time.

“You silly girl, will you stop it?” Cotannah said, laughing, and began pulling her around.

The mare went back up the sloping bank as fast as she’d gone down it. Cotannah bent to avoid the low branch of a mulberry tree, but it caught her anyway, pulled off her cap, and tore at her hair, sent it tumbling in all directions over her shoulders and face.

“Whoa!”

Pretty Feather knew that tone of voice, and she began to slow immediately, turning easily in a circle as Cotannah’s knees squeezed her, but by the time she’d gotten her hair out of her eyes and gone back, the cap had dropped from the tree into the water, which was fast carrying it away. Cold air swirled around her head.

“Well, I hope you’re happy, Miss Priss. Now my ears are going to freeze!”

In answer, Pretty Feather dipped and tossed her head once more and pawed at the frosty ground. Cotannah sighed and turned the mare’s head toward the house.

“I hope nobody at Tall Pine is sentimental about that cap.”

But nothing could destroy her fine mood on such a morning, and she and the mare began wandering through the woods, Pretty Feather delighting in making the squirrels run for the trees, Cotannah loving the sight of the sunlight hitting the leaves, which seemed to be turning deeper colors right before her eyes.

She wished Walks-With-Spirits was here to see them, too. Talking to him had made her feel as free as she felt this morning, and she marveled again at the fact that she had told him everything in her life. Never, ever, had she done that, not even with Emily, but even more astonishing was the fact that she’d told it all to a man. Never, ever, was she straightforward with any man. But without a moment’s hesitation, she had been completely forthcoming with Walks-With-Spirits.

The desire to be with him again suddenly stabbed through her, so fast and deep that it made her hands tighten on the reins. She took in a long breath of the cold, crisp air, turned Pretty Feather around, and started back toward the house, where she could find someone to talk to, someone to distract her from thinking about
him and wondering when she’d see him. She could still taste his kiss.

She slowed Pretty Feather to a walk and gazed into the long line of oak and elm trees growing along the fence line between this pasture and the grounds of the house, stared at their low, leafy branches as if they could whisper secrets to her when the breeze moved through them just right. The frost was brightening them fast and furiously, turning some of them yellow and others all shades of orange and red. They were so beautiful that she filled her eyes with the colors, tried to memorize the way they looked, trembling in the breeze, flashing their frosty sides in the early-morning sun.

A flash of a deeper, golden yellow moved in between two tree trunks, in a different way from the rippling leaves. She blinked and looked again, slowed Pretty Feather even more so she could see through a break in the timber. There it was, farther away toward the house, only a glimpse of a vanishing patch of gold. Low to the ground. Vanishing behind the log smokehouse.

Her heart gave a quick, hard, pounding beat. Could the gold have been Basak? Walks-With-Spirits might be going to Tall Pine to see her!

That thought made her stop the mare and put her hands to her hair, running her fingers through it to comb it as best she could. Oh! She looked awful in these boy’s clothes, with her hair wild and loose.

But she didn’t care. He liked to talk with her more than to look at her, as all the other men did.

What if she went into the house and there he was at the breakfast table? Maybe he would stay around and they could go walking in the woods and talk all day long!

She smiled as Pretty Feather carried her toward the house. After he told her the story of his childhood, perhaps
she could get him to explain how he knew everything. Two years ago, he had predicted that she would seek him out one day and she had done so. That boggled her mind—it seemed impossible in one way and in another, totally natural. Ever since that moment when he had looked into her soul out on the Texas Road, it had seemed natural that he would know everything. But how could that be?

Pretty Feather ambled to a complete stop. Absently, Cotannah pulled the mare’s head up and stuck her heels to her sides to get her to move on, while her mind clung to Walks-With-Spirits. Where had he come from? What had his childhood been like? She couldn’t wait to hear his story.

And he might be at Tall Pine right now! She smooched to Pretty Feather and lifted her into a trot, rode through the trees, opened the gate, went through and closed it behind her and looked ahead to try to see him. There was no sign, but that meant nothing—Basak and Taloa would lie hidden in wait for him, and he’d had time to go inside already, since he had no horse to tend. Smoke was rising from the kitchen chimney, and Daisy was shaking the tablecloth off the back porch.

A palomino gelding that she knew belonged to Peter Phillips stood tied at the stable hitching post, a light steam rising from his back in the cold air of the morning, a saddle upended on the ground on his off side. Phillips squatted beside it, brushing the horse’s leg.