In the Season of the Sun (26 page)

The sound was faint, almost inaudible. He cursed his awkwardness and tried again, summoning the courage to pipe with more force upon the reed flute. This time the trilling rang upon the still and wintry night. He played upon the reed, letting the lilting tones speak for him, some hesitant, others strong and full of longing.

There were other flutes, other young men with melodies of their own, and the mingling of their music made a joyous cacophony that sparked memories of days past in nodding old men when youth and spring were one.

Jacob played. He closed his eyes; his fingers fluttered over the holes transforming notes from low and throaty to a high, piping caprice. He no longer felt self-conscious. The ritual possessed him now. He was Sun Gift, a Blackfoot, a part of the People. Their ways were his. He only hoped she heard him. He only hoped she would respond.

Suddenly a hand touched his arm. He opened his eyes, and Tewa, sensing she had startled him, laughed and pulling her wolf cowl close around her shoulders, took the flute from his lips. She tapped the flute against his shoulder.

“There, I have counted coup. Now I am truly a warrior woman.”

“And too proud to stand in my blanket?” Jacob asked. His right arm, draped with the blanket, swung out.

“Too cold to refuse.”

Tewa stepped within reach. Jacob draped his blanketed arm around her shoulders and they walked together. The Hudson Bay blanket formed a cowl that almost completely hid their features as it protected them from the icy air.

“I am surprised Two Stars did not try to drive me off,” Jacob remarked.

“He would have,” Tewa said. “But I hid his war club and moccasins.” She laughed again. Jacob loved the sound of her voice, especially her laughter.

They passed other couples, wrapped and shrouded in the night. Jacob thought he recognized Otter Tail's chunky shape waiting patiently before Good Bear Woman's lodge. The portly brave stomped his feet and slapped his sides in an effort to keep warm. Good Bear Woman was making him wait.

A mongrel pup left the side of a nearby tepee and cautiously approached the hooded couple. Jacob kicked a dirt clod in the direction of the pup and the animal scampered back to its mother's side. Jacob didn't want any distractions.

He glanced at Tewa. Her gaze was fixed on the western rims, and he sensed she walked the High Lonesome in her mind. A star streaked across the heavens, trailing green fire and lost itself beyond the ridge. For a second the darkness was illumined with emerald fire. There was magic here, though Jacob doubted his ability to read the sign. Lone Walker would have had some song for the phenomenon, some prayer chant to invoke the truth in a shooting star. Jacob had not his father's experience, or his wisdom, and he did not believe in the power of the songs. Jacob's truth was the strength of his limbs and a fast horse. His truth was a stout war club, a straight-shooting rifle, and the will to survive. His truth was the impetuousness of youth, and the desire that warmed his limbs and left him yearning for more than this night could bring.

“Do you long for the lonely places?” he asked.

“No. My heart hears my father's hurt and I am saddened. But not enough to leave.”

“I am glad.”

“Why?”

“I wish to bring horses to your grandfather … horses and fine robes and meat for his winter fire.”

“What has such generosity to do with me?” Tewa asked, feigning ignorance.

“Saa-vaa
. I think you know,” Jacob scolded. He brushed his blond hair back from his face. His bronze eyes reflected the moonlight as he studied the woman in his arms and read her playful expression. “But I will speak it anyway. We are two called together. I am the Sun Gift, you are Tewa, the Earth Spirit. Surely old Two Stars will see it is good.”

“Two Stars is blind,” Tewa reminded the young man at her side.

“He will see. Tell him I will bring him gifts like no other. I will speak for you, that this blanket which surrounds us becomes like our lives, holding us together and making us one.” Jacob spoke with authority now, clear and strong, for he knew in his heart what must be said. He could not wait months or years but must know now. As when he first saw her, his pulse raced and his breath clutched at his chest. “I will do all these things, Tewa, but first you must say you wish it so.”

There. It was done. He would be bound to her from this night forth or he would depart with aching heart and dashed hopes. Let her decide.

Turn to the mountains. Let it be. Be free
. Tewa could not hide her feelings any longer. His hunger was hers; his desire, hers as well. His strength called to her, his gentleness too.

“I wish it so,” she said and freed him.

Jacob's heart soared among the glittering stars. Tewa's on gossamer wings joined his in the moonlight. Earthbound, their bodies melded one to the other beneath the blanket, and their hands caressed in secret places and foretold the sweeter rewards of the wedding lodge. And then a branch snapped, probably beneath a burden of ice, but Tewa gasped and looked toward the forest. Alarmed by the sound, she searched the impenetrable shadows at the forest's edge.

“What is it?” Jacob whispered. “Do you fear where the Cold Maker creeps among the trees?”

“I fear my father,” the young woman replied.

“I pity him,” Jacob countered. Tewa stiffened and tossed her head like a willful colt.

“Pity yourself if he rides down from the backbone of the world.”

“Let him come. I will bring my fine horses to him. Let him accept my gifts, look into our hearts, and be glad.”

Tewa shook her head. “I remember what Lone Walker told us. My father will meet you with his war lance in his hand.” Her grip tightened on Jacob's arm. “I fear for you and for my father and what must happen when he rides down into Ever Shadow.”

“Nothing will happen,” Jacob replied. “I won't fight him. Wolf Lance can howl his challenge to the moon. I won't ride against him.”

Tewa glanced up at the one who embraced her. He had found a way out of her dilemma. Her father was much too honorable to fight if Jacob did not ride out to meet him. Her worries ended.

“And what if others say you have the courage of a coyote?” Tewa asked, for Jacob was as proud as any young brave. Yet he only shrugged and remembering a biblical verse from his childhood, spoke haltingly, the memory so terribly distant, and not without pain.

“Tell them … to everything there is a season. A time … to hate and a time … to love, a time of war and a time of peace.” Jacob held her close. “Peace will be the gift I bring to you.”

On this night of shooting stars anything seemed possible.

29

U
nshod hooves of Indian ponies cracked like gunshots, shattering the dry wintry stillness as the horses crunched along the ice-crusted trail. Jacob turned once more to his companions who had helped him track the bear whose paw prints led toward a thicket of aspen saplings and beyond to the dark patch of a cave a hundred yards away.

“You have done enough in cutting the bear sign,” Jacob said. Otter Tail and Yellow Eagle had ridden with him the better part of the morning and kidded Jacob unmercifully now that he hoped to ask for Tewa in marriage.

“No, we ought to ride with you,” Otter Tail said. “The bear will see your white skin and hide deeper in his cave thinking you are an evil spirit.”

“Yes, let us call him out,” Yellow Eagle added, grinning. “I have a charmed flute made from the leg bone of an antelope killed by a bear. I need but to blow upon it and old grandfather bear will charge from his lair.”

“I must ride alone if I am to ask for Tewa. The gift of a fine bear pelt shall win me a wife from Two Stars.”

“And what if the bear kills you?” Yellow Eagle asked, bringing up a distinct possibility. Jacob's aim would have to be true. There was no animal more fierce than a wounded bear.

“Then he can take my pelt to the village and ask for a bride of his choosing.” Jacob laughed. “Perhaps even Good Bear Woman.” He directed his remark at Otter Tail, knowing the corpulent brave had yet to find the courage to ask for the hand of Yellow Eagle's sister.

“I'd gladly accept,” Yellow Eagle said. “It would be an improvement over the one who courts her now.”

“Saaa-vaaa-hey
. I've heard enough!” Otter Tail snapped and spun his horse around. “Someone had better keep watch over the horses you left in the meadow below. Unless you intend them for Kootenai thieves.” He rode at a brisk trot back through the forest, retracing his own trail back down the wooded slope. The lofty branches of the ponderosa pines fractured the sunlight and left the hillside checkered light and dark. A man rode across golden gleaming snow into emerald shadow and entered sunlight again. It made for treacherous tracking. However, Jacob Sun Gift had long ago proved his prowess on the hunt.

“My sister may have to one day gather horses and pelts and ask for him,” Yellow Eagle said, watching Otter Tail vanish into the woods. He turned, adjusting his weight on horseback. His bad leg often ached after a long ride. “I have ridden with you out of friendship. I leave the same way.” He led his own mount onto the path Otter Tail had blazed, lifted his rifle in salute, and rode away.

Jacob watched him leave, sensing the immensity of the landscape loom even larger as he was left alone. He had ridden these woods before and could not understand why such familiar territory suddenly seemed ominous and overwhelming. Perhaps it was the stillness. No wild creature stirred. And on the horizon, the purple peaks were masked with clouds.

Even the noise of his friends' departure ceased to carry on the thin air as if the forest depths had swallowed him whole. Jacob eased the tension by checking his Hawken rifle and adjusting the broad-bladed knife in his belt. His hand closed around the familiar grip jutting from his belt. He carried no war shield. Willow frame and toughened bull hide would not turn the claws of an enraged grizzly. And that was precisely the game he had trailed, an old silvertip whose thickly furred pelt would warm the lodge of blind Two Stars, warm the blind one's heart too, and make the old one happy to accept Jacob's marriage offer.

Jacob studied the deep, five-pointed impressions the grizzly's paws had cut into the snow. They led toward the aspen grove true enough, but Jacob had no intention of plunging into the thicket. He'd skirt the aspens and angle about thirty yards out of his way along the hillside, then cut back and see if the bear sign continued up to the cave on the ridge just above timberline.

An absence of tracks would indicate the grizzly was in the aspen thicket. Jacob didn't relish the task of stalking the animal through that wall of aspen and underbrush. He hoped he wouldn't have to.

Jacob readied himself, marveling at the price a man had to pay to win the hand of his beloved. And what would his natural parents think, to see him courting a Blackfoot maiden. Somehow he felt Joseph and Ruth Milam would have loved Tewa and been proud to call her daughter.

Poor timing for memories. They dulled his sense of caution, preoccupied him with images of long ago, of a boy named Jacob Milam!

He was Jacob Sun Gift now and should never have ridden into the clearing, out of the safety of the pines. Jacob skirted the aspen grove but lost in his reverie cut closer to the aspens than he'd intended.

One moment he was recalling his parents' life of struggle and the next second he was struggling for his life. The thicket exploded in a shower of ice splinters and churned snow. Jacob reined back and his horse reared, pawing the air as a hammer-headed gray stallion charged out from the shadowy underbrush. Jacob kicked free as his horse went down beneath the stallion's onslaught. The gray's rider rose up and seemed to blot out the sky. A mask of hatred beneath a wolf's head cowl split open in a savage grimace, and a demonic shriek filled the air.

Wolf Lance!
The name reverberated in Jacob's skull as he caught a glimpse of man and war shield and obsidian-tipped spear. The chiseled-stone spear point missed Jacob's throat by inches. Plunging hooves tore a patch of hide off his hip as the gray stallion vaulted the man on the ground.

Wolf Lance galloped past. Jacob staggered to his feet empty handed and looked in desperation for his rifle. He spotted it in the snow a few yards away. Behind him, his horse struggled to stand and fell back, one of its hind legs broken.

Wolf Lance charged.

“No,” Jacob shouted, attempting to reason with the man. “Wait. I won't …” Oh hell, he thought and spun on his heels headed for his rifle. The earth trembled underfoot from the gray charger bearing down on him. Wolf Lance, black war paint smeared across his forehead and eyes, chalk-white paste covering the lower half of his face, brandished a ten-foot war lance, its pine shaft decorated with medicine symbols and black raven feathers.

Jacob reached the rifle, turned, and squeezed the trigger. The hammer slammed down on an empty nipple. The percussion cap had been jarred loose and was lost in the snow. It was an educated guess and all Jacob had time for. Death rode within arm's reach. He parried the spear. The gray stallion clipped his shoulder and knocked him into the snow.

Jacob Sun Gift hit hard, his senses reeling. On sheer reflex he gathered his arms beneath him and rolled to his side, and avoided once again the stallion's unshod hooves.

Jacob willed himself to stand. The aspen was just ahead. He glanced over his shoulder as Wolf Lance brought his war-horse around and drove his heels into the animal's flanks. Steam jutted from the stallion's nostrils.

“Haaaiiii-yaaa!”
Wolf Lance roared as the gray lunged forward once more.

Jacob stripped off his buckskin shirt and darted toward his attacker. He waved the shirt, shouted and flapped, and the gray stallion pulled up sharply. Wolf Lance had to clutch at the animal's mane to keep from being thrown. That was Jacob's opening. He closed quickly and leapt for the rider. Wolf Lance tried to bring the startled gray to bear.