People of the Fire (42 page)

 
          
 
Ahead of them, perhaps four dart casts away,
the little band of mountain sheep stopped in the old ewe's shadow, staring back
at them.

 
          
 
"Now what?" Little Dancer asked.

 
          
 
"Forward," Rattling Hooves called in
her throaty voice. "Just a bit at a time. We don't want them to spook and
bolt. If they do, they'll miss the trap."

 
          
 
Little Dancer repeated the order, hearing it
passed down the line of people threading their way along the slope.

 
          
 
Below him, the valley lay cloaked in snow. The
willow-packed stream bottom lay in blue shadow, rounded mounds of snow marking
the looping course of the ice-shrouded stream banks. Here and there a dark
patch showed where the water ran too fast to freeze over. The winter-nude
willows had been crisscrossed with deer and elk tracks. The slope opposite
brooded in memories of summer. The perpetually shadowed spruce and fir slept
mantled in deep snow.

 
          
 
Little Dancer looked up into the winter-blue
vault of the sky, marveling at how the color seemed so much deeper in the short
days. A faint glaze of clouds laced the heavens to the east. The nippy breeze
played carelessly down the canyon. Curiously, he sniffed, seeing if he could
detect any odor of the sheep. The air stung his nostrils.

 
          
 
Below him, Elk Charm picked her way carefully.
As if she could feel his eyes on her, she looked up, smiling as she tossed her
wealth of jet-black hair over a hide-wrapped shoulder.

 
          
 
A pleasant thrill rose peacefully in his
breast. Finally he could smile, laugh, enjoy life as it should be lived. This
bit of land had become theirs. Here they lived beyond the fear of Blood Bear,
beyond the nightmare of Heavy Beaver.

 
          
 
He took another step, trying to dig his
moccasin-clad foot into the side of the mountain. Gravel and dirt rattled and
cascaded under his weight.

 
          
 
"Hey!" Hungry Bull griped in a muted
voice.

 
          
 
Little Dancer chuckled from the pit of his
stomach.

 
          
 
Ahead of him, the sheep began to move again,
the old ewe leaping gracefully from rock to rock, the sun shining on her sleek
winter coat. An old ram followed the rest, uneasy, hanging to the rear as if he
didn't know quite what to do.

 
          
 
From where Little Dancer traced his way along
the slope, he could barely see the low saddle. "Time for Elk Charm to work
her way ahead and up," Rattling Hooves added.

 
          
 
From high above where Three Toes scrambled
from one precarious perch to another came a robin's lilting call. Little Dancer
shook his head at the incongruity of the birdsong until he realized he'd been
tricked by Three Toes' talented mimicking.

 
          
 
Below, Elk Charm waved and began to move
faster, walking along the more stable rocks. Black Crow and Meadow-lark took up
the pace, keeping the line more or less even. Hungry Bull kept his position.

 
          
 
The old ewe trotted ahead, kicking dirt and
pebbles to bounce down the slope. The younger ewes and lambs followed, almost
buckjumping
across the loose
scree
.
Reaching the secure footing on the other side, the lead ewe stopped, staring at
the saddle as if she understood.

 
          
 
Little Dancer swallowed, thinking about the
dwindling supplies of meat.

 
          
 
"Please, Mother," he pleaded.

 
          
 
She turned to stare over her buff shoulder.
Across the distance, he could feel her eyes on him.

 
          
 
"Please, Mother," he whispered
fervently. "We need your meat."

 
          
 
The drive line had come to a stop. The ewe
shot a quick glance up toward the trap. She craned her neck, ears pricked
behind her thin curved horns. One avenue of escape remained. She stared hard at
the narrow gap where she could bolt and flank the drive line. The decision
seemed to waver in her mind.

 
          
 
"Please, Mother," Little Dancer
repeated under his breath. He tried to reach her, to explain the starvation
that could befall a people without the gift of meat. Fists clenched, he cleared
his mind, seeking to convey the need.

 
          
 
Time slipped. He didn't realize he'd fallen to
his knees, arms lifted. "Please, Mother."

 
          
 
The feeling leached up from the sharp rock
that bit into his knees. That instant of awareness stretched, the Oneness
wrapping around him like fog around the scabby bark of the valley cottonwoods
in morning.

 
          
 
"We're hungry, Mother. Lend us your life.
Share your spirit with us." He didn't remember meeting her eyes across the
distance. For the moment only the touching of their souls mattered. Only the
pulsing of the ewe's heart, the rush of air in her lungs, the worry in her
mind, filled his consciousness.

 
          
 
"Feed us, Mother."

 
          
 
Understanding, regret, acceptance, the
emotions filled him, possessed him. He himself turned, walking on four nimble
legs, starting up the slope. He watched a colorless world now flatly visible in
shades of gray through the ewe's eyes. Through her ears, he heard the rest
following, their scrambling feet grating on the loose gravels of the mountain,
clacking on the rock. The odors of earth and frost and mold-rich leaves packed
under the bitterbrush and squaw currant hung in his nose, mixed with the tang
of winter-cured grass.

 
          
 
He relished the power of her legs as she
bounded up the slope. He ran on her wondrous feet, surefooted with her padded
hooves where a man would slip and tumble.

 
          
 
Then she passed between the two rocky
outcrops, topping the crest of the ridge, running down between the stacked
pitch-pine wing walls of the trap. Her muscles took the leap into the catch
pen, while the others crowded behind.

 
          
 
Two Smokes' net rose behind and the other ewes
and lambs began to bleat nervously. She waited, sharing the moment with him,
uneasy, but accepting so long as he shared her mind. The bleating of the herd,
the snorting of the jittery ram, stung every instinct.

 
          
 
The shouts of the hunters shot terror through
the rest of the herd, adding to the panic of their bleating and dashing about.
The net crowded them forward, handled by the crippled Two Smokes and the agile
Rattling Hooves. They appeared oddly out of perspective, looking flat and
awesome through the ewe's eyes. She barely flinched as the net lowered over
her, a weight that couldn't be comprehended. The others stood trembling, trying
to understand this thing, this binding of strings smelling of human and juniper
bark.

 
          
 
He understood the clubs. And through him, so
did she. The rising of the fire-cured juniper, the arcing descent, the hollow
smash, shivered his being. The rich odor of blood carried on the breeze, its
musk mixing with the scent of humans. One by one, the rest of the bighorns were
clubbed. Inevitable death approached.

 
          
 
Little Dancer stared up at his father,
huddling down as the club rose against a gray sky. He flinched as the whistling
arc of wood descended.

 
          
 
Blackness.

 
          
 
Voices.

 
          
 
"He's waking up. Little Dancer? Can you
hear me?" The familiar feeling of hands—human hands—cradled him. Warmth
rose from the body supporting him. He groaned, stirring, savoring the
sensations of life, of the heart beating in his breast. A wonderful sensation
of numbing chill saturated his legs and arms and led him to shiver.

 
          
 
Alive!

 
          
 
"What happened? Did you fall?" Elk
Charm's concern brought him up from the layers of infinity to open his eyes to
the bright light of a slanting sun. He blinked, finding himself on Elk Charm's
lap. Hungry Bull crouched over him, holding his hands, half-frantic eyes
searching his face anxiously. Around him, Three Toes, Black Crow, and Rattling
Hooves bent over, expressions tense.

 
          
 
"You missed the hunt." Hungry Bull
almost laughed with relief. "You fell down and—"

 
          
 
"I was there," he croaked, taking a
deep breath. "The ewe and I . . . One. We were One. She was going to drop
down, miss the trap. I pleaded."

 
          
 
The memories came rushing back, each step,
each breath and heartbeat. The rising of the club, the inevitability of death.
A violent shiver racked his body.

 
          
 
"We've got to warm him up," Rattling
Hooves spoke from somewhere beyond.

 
          
 
Hands lifted him, people mumbled disjointedly
as his body shifted beyond his control.

 
          
 
"Watch your step." The words muddled
in his ears.

 
          
 
He floated off again, awed by the thought that
he'd died with the ewe—and it hadn't been unpleasant. But what had happened afterward?
A feathery feeling of drifting . . .

 
          
 
Warmth. A crackling of fire. Smoke tickled his
nostrils. Bleary-eyed, he blinked at a fire set into a shallow pit. The odor of
roasting meat filled his nostrils. A sudden hunger saturated him.

 
          
 
"And he keeps talking about the
One?" Two Smokes could be heard to one side. "I saw the ewe stop. I
thought for sure she'd bolt and we'd miss them. A feeling of Power prickled in
the air. I knew it, the way a
berdache
knows. Then
the ewe turned and walked right into the trap. She didn't even look scared, but
her eyes ... the way she stood . . . possessed."

 
          
 
"Shared," Little Dancer croaked. “Shared."
And he stared into the crackling flames, drifting with the sparks.

           
 
"What do you think about Little Dancer
and his visions?" Three Toes asked cautiously as they climbed. "You
know, he's not like a child who . . . Child? I mean a man. He's killed his
first buffalo and he and Elk Charm are obviously man and woman under their
hides at night. But he's so young . . . and so old at the same time. You're his
father, what do you make of it?"

 
          
 
Hungry Bull puffed a frosty breath from his
laboring lungs as he looked up at the mat of snow-covered branches interlacing
into a woven pattern above them. The boles of the fir trees had a washed-out
grayish look against the snow and the crisscrossing of powder-mantled deadfall.

 
          
 
He shook his head, stopping to pack down a
place to stand in the knee-deep snow so he wouldn't slip and tumble back down
the steep trail. The pockmarks of elk tracks wound around the uprooted base of
a blown-down tree and disappeared into timber. How could elk run up stuff like
this? Magical!

 
          
 
"I worry about him." What more could
be said?

 
          
 
"And Elk Charm?"