People of the Fire (43 page)

 
          
 
Hungry Bull shrugged, resettling the pack on
his back. "He's a man, old friend. He's killed his meat and taken a woman.
He's proven he can feed her. He's taken the responsibilities of a man—and he
acts like it. He's strong and smart and has to make his own way now."

 
          
 
Three Toes sniffed at the cold, looking back
down the tortuous trail they'd followed up the mountain side. From up where he
stood, the slope looked worse than it had been. Up was always less scary than
down. Long braided-hide ropes curled on their backs. "You feel cramped in
here, like you can't see. Like some monster might reach out of all these trees
and eat you or something."

 
          
 
Hungry Bull chuckled. "My odd boy—the one
you worry so much about—would Dream you back."

 
          
 
"You think that's what he did?"
Three Toes shook his head. "I don't know, maybe he did. White Calf always
said he had Power. And Two Smokes, well, I always thought he was a . . .
different. But, you know, these
Anit'ah
, they think
berdache
have some sort of Power, like Traders—"

 
          
 
"Not like Traders—they're
berdache
."

           
 
"Okay,
berdache
Power. I can start to believe that/' Three Toes frowned, sucking loudly at his
teeth before uttering the throaty rasp of a
stellar's
jay. The call echoed through the somber trees. A chickadee peeped in return.

 
          
 
Hungry Bull squinted up at the tiny patch of
blue sky he could see straight overhead. "Yeah, I think Little Dancer has
Power. I hear him at night while he's asleep. Dreams come on him. Not like
normal people dream, but Power Dreams, and a lot of the time he wakes up . . .
but he doesn't, you know? You can talk to him and he'll talk back, but he's not
there, not with you in the shelter."

 
          
 
"I saw. Last night. You called to him and
he answered that it was the fire. I looked, and the fire looked just fine. He
had his eyes open, Hungry Bull. I could see that—but it was like he wasn't
inside."

 
          
 
"You were awake when I asked him about it
this morning? He just blinked at me, baffled."

 
          
 
"Yeah. That's enough to make my hair
stand on end," Three Toes grumbled. "Makes Fun is getting a little
spooked about it. Black Crow's told her to keep quiet, that it's a phase and
Little Dancer will grow out of it."

 
          
 
"Come on, the snow's freezing my feet,
standing still like this." And he wanted desperately to avoid the subject
that had started to wear on all of them.

 
          
 
He took another step, following in the path of
the elk that had climbed before them. The elk knew the best way to get to the
top of the mountain. But then, where an elk thought the trail was easy and
where a man did demonstrated two different realities.

 
          
 
"So we're going to snare an elk just like
a rabbit?" Three Toes puffed and struggled up after Hungry Bull,
continuing his peeping conversation with the chickadees. "Sounds real
crazy.''

 
          
 
"Why?" Hungry Bull wondered.
"You heard what Rattling Hooves said. All we—"

 
          
 
"I didn't get all of it. I'm still trying
to make sense out of that slurred pronunciation they talk in."

 
          
 
"Does sound slurred, doesn't it?"
Hungry Bull reached up with a mitten to scratch back of his ear. "But then
they say we cluck like sage grouse when we talk."

           
 
"Sage grouse?" Three Toes exploded
with a snort. "That'll be the day! We don't sound anything like sage
grouse when we talk."

 
          
 
"They think so."

 
          
 
"And what about you? You and Rattling
Hooves seem pretty blissful under the robes. You and she are going to stay
together? What about this One Cast? Is he going to be trouble for you?"

 
          
 
Hungry Bull pulled himself over a deadfall
where the elk had already knocked the snow off, dragging their bellies across.
He reached back and offered Three Toes a hand.

 
          
 
"She says it won't be trouble. She says
that among the Red Hand a woman can leave a man . . . just like that. I guess,
though, that it's considered polite to do something for the old husband. Take
him a couple fine robes, maybe some meat.

 
          
 
"But One Cast married her more or less
because she needed a husband. At least that's what she tells me. One Cast likes
his first wife best, a woman called Wet Rain. Rattling Hooves sure liked them
both. Said they helped deceive Blood Bear when he tried to take Elk Charm. I
guess that's reason enough to like them."

 
          
 
"Well, I can see that. Anyone who doesn't
like Blood Bear is all right in my view." Three Toes paused to take a deep
breath before adding, "But then I don't seem to be doing any too good with
Dreamers or leaders these days."

 
          
 
"Don't worry about it. You're safe now.
We can all start over, learn new things, and stay out of Heavy Beaver's
way."

 
          
 
"And Blood Bear?"

 
          
 
"I don't think he'll bother us. Not with
White Calf speaking for us."

 
          
 
"Um, I don't want to rain on your buffalo
hunt, but she's not as young as I'd like her to be."

 
          
 
"Thinking about another wife?"

 
          
 
"Oh, stop. White Calf? A wife? I could
think of bunches of better ways to commit suicide. Like sneaking up behind a
mad buffalo and slapping its scrotum with a prickly-pear cactus. But what if
she decides to take her soul to the
Starweb
sometime
soon? What do we do then? Our Spirit Woman protection's gone and died on
us."

 
          
 
"That's why we go visit the Red Hand in
spring. We go as relatives to Rattling Hooves and Elk Charm and Two Smokes. We
go and visit and trade and come back here. Rattling Hooves says that come
spring, we'll have shooting star, balsam root, onions, sego lily, biscuit root,
and all kinds of things growing up here. Then in late summer and fall there's
serviceberry and currants and pine nuts and ruff-necked grouse and all kinds of
good stuff. We might have to move a little to find the slopes with the best
harvest—I guess that changes from year to year—but it won't be bad."
"You like all that stuff? You like not eating buffalo?" Hungry Bull
slapped his belly. "Put it like this. I've grown used to looking down and
seeing my navel—maybe not so round as Black Crow's, but still, I haven't been
hungry for a long
long
time. Not only that, but stuff
like sego lily is sweet, wonderful. And baked biscuit root is like nothing else
in the world. I could eat that—like you could buffalo
backstrap
—for
the rest of my life."

 
          
 
"Doesn't seem right, all that digging in
the ground." Hungry Bull chuckled to himself. "Not more than a couple
of weeks ago, I told my son the same thing." "So what happened?"

 
          
 
"Rattling Hooves came into my life. For
the first time since I saw White Calf up on the ridge that day, the sun shone.
Now, well, look around you. It's pretty up here. The wind isn't as bad as down
in the plains. There's color up here in the rocks and soil and trees and the
flowers. And we can still trap. The sheep trap worked fine. We're after elk.
What's better for hunters than to hunt, eh? And no Heavy Beaver is Dreaming
trouble for us here."

 
          
 
"But it's so different from the old
ways." "Anything new is different. So learn and enjoy it."
"Like Rattling Hooves teaching you how to trap sheep? Blood and dung, if
Heavy Beaver could hear that! A hunter learning to hunt from a woman?" He
slapped his leg, laughing.

 
          
 
Hungry Bull lifted a shoulder in a shrug.
"I don't care. I'm happy. Let me tell you, I thought I'd never live again,
that my soul would rise to the
Starweb
like the black
smoke from burned fat. Now Rattling Hooves has come, and she's warm,
thoughtful, and she cares about me. I care about her.

           
 
The hole in my heart that opened when Sage
Root was murdered, well, it isn't gone completely, but there's a part of me that's
full where I didn't know it was empty. I feel whole now.''

 
          
 
Hungry Bull undid his pack, slinging it over a
chest-high log the elk had jumped. "Give me a leg up here."

 
          
 
With Three Toes' help, he scrambled over,
reaching back to pull his friend up. "Besides, your children like it here.
I watched Two Moons, Laughs A Lot, and Grasshopper up with Black Crow's get.
They were all rolling rocks down the hill, laughing and shrieking to wake the
ghosts."

 
          
 
"They like it. We lived so far east with
Seven Suns' band they didn't get many chances to roll rocks. Young ones should
get that chance."

 
          
 
"And Meadowlark and Makes Fun will like
it better, too. Work's not so hard up here. They won't have to go so far for
firewood in winter. Water's almost everywhere. Food's easier to find. You don't
have to pack as much on your back."

 
          
 
They cleared the trees, walking out into one
of the lower meadows. Underfoot the snow crunched. A raven rose with a rasping
of wings on air, sliding out of sight.

 
          
 
"I'd say—there." Three Toes pointed
to a narrow break in the trees that separated their meadow from one above it.
Near the break the snow had been dimpled by elk beds and stitched with tracks.
The place stunk of the rich musky odor of elk. Piles of scat and urine discolored
the snow.

 
          
 
"They cross through there, I'll
bet." Three Toes kicked urine-crusted snow loose and sniffed, grinning
like a fool as he exhaled a frosty cloud.

 
          
 
"Think those trees are strong enough to
hold an elk?"

 
          
 
"Think our rope is?" Three Toes
countered.

 
          
 
"Guess we'll find out." Hungry Bull
plodded his way across the clearing.

 
          
 
"So, how sensitive are elk to man
smell?" Three Toes wondered. "Will they pass through there even
though everything smells like people?"

 
          
 
"Rattling Hooves said we should piss on
either side of the passage through the trees. She said elk sniff and leave
their mark on top of a man's."

 
          
 
"You're joking!"

           
 
"No joke. She told me that when she was
married to Elk Charm's father, he used to backtrack and find elk had followed him
for half a day.''

 
          
 
"Hunted and hunter, huh? Like silver
bears." Three Toes stared over his shoulder at the somber line of trees.

 
          
 
Hungry Bull stepped into the first elk bed—and
almost fell. The animal's warm body had frozen the snow and coated the bed with
a glaze of ice. "Frozen solid. They've been gone a while." He picked
up a pellet from the pile, squeezing it between thumb and forefinger.

 
          
 
The passage through the trees looked
excellent. The trail had been packed down by elk feet.