In the Season of the Sun (23 page)

Tewa and Jacob worked together on this the eighteenth morning since he had come to the valley. Jacob fashioned snowshoes made of birch while Tewa finished tanning an elk hide using a mixture of buffalo calf brains and liver to draw out the glue in the hide. The buckskin, once smooth and soft to the touch, would furnish enough material for three pairs of moccasins. Tewa had already fashioned a needle from a piece of goat's leg bone. Elk sinew would be her thread.

Tewa enjoyed Jacob's company. As he spoke of the Medicine Lake village, her heart would pine for an end to her father's self-imposed exile. She wanted to be among her own people again, to gossip and laugh with other girls her own age, to feel a part of the world again as a person and not some wild creature hiding out in the heart of Ever Shadow.

Despite Wolf Lance's every objection, she had grown to accept Jacob as one of her own kind, though his long hair was burnished gold not black and his sunburned skin, bronzed not dark and coppery. And why not accept him? Jacob walked the path of the People. The ways of the Blackfoot were his ways, their dreams his dreams. A man like the legendary Lone Walker, he who had crossed the backbone of the world in his youth and seen the Great Water at the edge of the world where the sun sleeps, if even such a man as this could call Jacob “son,” then Tewa knew it was right for her to accept the handsome young man called Sun Gift as one of her own kind. It was enough for her to trust him, to like him, and in the end to feel the stirrings of an even more powerful emotion. Being near him made her feel hot and cold all at once, to feel desperately tense and troubled and yet lightheaded in the same breath.

She tried to hide all these emotions from Wolf Lance, who kept coming up with excuses to keep Tewa from finding too much time alone with Jacob. He made a point of accompanying her whenever Tewa left to check her traps. If she chose to scout the valley or range the ridges for sign of any intruders, Wolf Lance was there, shadowing his daughter, always in sight, unobtrusive but impossible to ignore.

But today Tewa and Jacob planned to give her father the slip. Jacob finished his work first, donned his snowshoes, and walked away from camp. He followed a trail leading north. Half an hour later, Tewa left to check on the horses. She did so, and afterwards, once the young woman was hidden in the shadow of the firs, she darted out of sight. Wolf Lance and Lone Walker were working on their own snowshoes and never noticed a thing until it was too late to call her back.

About an hour later, on the forested ridge above camp, Jacob and Tewa rendezvoused. They grinned like mischievous children who had just outwitted the adults. Jacob had an extra pair of snowshoes strapped to his back. He carried his Hawken rifle and, beneath his capote, Tewa's elk horn bow and a quiver of obsidian-tipped arrows.

“Now, little she-wolf, where will you lead me?” Jacob said. He pulled the cowl of his long coat up to cover his head. The heavy woolen capote kept him safe from the cold wind. Losing himself in Tewa's dark-eyed gaze helped to raise his temperature as well. Whatever feelings had drawn Jacob into the mountains in search of the young woman had intensified now that she was near. All the better that she sought out his company. He wanted to speak to her of what was in his heart, but he didn't have the words.

“I will show you a special place,” Tewa said, pulling the wolf cowl around her features. “Who can tell when my father will not shadow us again?”

At the mention of Wolf Lance, Jacob glanced around, half expecting to see the older warrior come riding at a rough gallop through the snow.

“Does he fear for your safety with me? And he seeks to protect you?” Jacob asked.

“Maybe he hopes to protect you.”

“From who?”

“Me,” the young woman replied, enjoying Jacob's confusion.

“Well then, I hope he fails.” Jacob sheepishly lowered his eyes and found something on the ground to stare at. When he looked up, Tewa was smiling. She turned and started up the ridge. The snow wasn't as deep on the slope and except for the cold thin air the climb wasn't arduous. Jacob was more than happy to keep to a switchback trail. When it broke from timberline, they were well above the lodge and all but out of sight of the two older warriors silhouetted against the sun-patched ground out front.

Wolf Lance finished repairing the woven center of his snowshoe. He glanced toward the grove of trees and the horses cropping the shoots of grass sprouting through the snow. Tewa's absence bothered him. Normally, he would not have been alarmed by her disappearance, but with this white man who pretended to be a Blackfoot lurking about …

“My brother, your thoughts follow a troubled path,” Lone Walker said.

“They follow my daughter,” said Wolf Lance.

“With children, it is often the same thing,” Lone Walker chuckled. He reached for another strand of birch wood peeling to weave into his snowshoe frame. “Trouble and joy,” he added, and winced as his newly healed wound protested the suddenness of his actions.

Wolf Lance stood and crossed to the side of the lodge where a bow and quiver of arrows hung from a branch stub. He slung the quiver over his shoulder.

“You worry too much,” Lone Walker said. “No doubt Tewa has gone to check her snares and set them again if need be.” Lone Walker started to rise. “I will come with you.”

“You move too slow,” Wolf Lance said. “It is none of your concern. She is my daughter.”

“And he is my son,” Lone Walker retorted, knowing full well what his old friend suspected, that Jacob and Tewa had conspired to be together. Why else would Jacob be so interested in hunting on a day when there was already plenty of meat all ready to roast. As for Tewa, anyone with eyes could see the horses were fine.

Lone Walker studied the slope behind the lodge and imagined just about where the young couple might have crossed paths. Wolf Lance took a rope made of braided horse hair and started back through the campsite. Lone Walker moved to block his path.

“Let them be,” he said. “Remember how it once was with us, when we were younger and called to the girls to stand with us in our blankets. Give them this moment, for my son and I will be gone soon. We will try our luck in the passes.”

Wolf Lance did not reply.

“Where is the harm? I am able to ride. Soon, Jacob and I will be gone and leave you to your exile,” Lone Walker said. “Let them be. It is the way of things, the All-Father's will if they are together.” Lone Walker brought his face close to his friend. “The All-Father led my son to Tewa. Now let them walk the same path if only for a little while.”

Again Wolf Lance made no reply. He brushed Lone Walker aside and started toward the grove where the horses grazed. Lone Walker, ignoring the pain flaring through his shoulder, caught Wolf Lance by the sleeve of his wolf-pelt coat and spun him around. Jacob's father was angry now. He'd had his fill of mystery, of his old friend's open hostility toward Jacob.

“Give them time.”

“Time?” Wolf Lance scowled. “My daughter has never known a man. Only her father. Time? For your white-eyed son to fill Tewa's head with foolish talk? Time to turn her against her father? Take her to his blanket?”

“You have been gone too long, my brother.” Lone Walker spoke in a conciliatory tone, trying to reason with this unreasonable friend. “Is it so terrible if my son and your daughter are two called together?”

Wolf Lance started to reply and hesitated, his eyes growing moist, then he seemed to shrink in on himself. He pulled free of Lone Walker but only to slump onto a log near the campfire.

“Yes,” he replied. “And even worse, I fear.” He stared at the flames of the campfire. Smoke rose in lazy spirals, grayish white against the stark blue expanse of the sky. He watched the flames flutter and dance and in their constant motion found the courage to speak what had been locked in his heart since he had first fled to the backbone of the world.

“I walked in a dream, long past, when Tewa was but a child,” Wolf Lance began. His expression seemed distant, as if, to relive the dream and share it, he must cleanse himself of all emotion. “I saw my daughter, grown like a flower in the time of the New Grass Moon, blessed by the All-Father with beauty and gentleness and courage. And great was my happiness. Until the Above Ones revealed to me the path I must walk. In my dreams, Tewa left my side and stood in the shadow of another man, one who opened his blanket to her.”

Wolf Lance reached out toward the flames and warmed the palms of his hands. Then he reached beneath his wolf-hide coat and brought out a tomahawk, its Green River iron blade smooth and sharp. He held the short-handled ax aloft, his grip tightened around the wooden shaft, then, with a savage downward sweep, he buried the blade inches deep in the ground.

“It was given to me how I must kill this shadow man. It was the All-Father's will I must fight him. And try to kill him.” Wolf Lance looked up at his friend. “And one thing more was shown me on the last night I spent among my people: the ground covered with blood. White snow and blood and Cold Maker's wind howling lost and lonely among the hills. This was my vision, that I must battle all the men who would seek my daughter. I must change my name to Slayer and kill the sons of my brothers—your son, too, Lone Walker, even your son.”

Wolf Lance stood and returned the tomahawk to the beaded belt circling his waist. He held out his hands and shrugged. “That night I fled. I came to the backbone of the world and did not change my name to Slayer.” The warrior in exile looked toward the horses and for a moment considered trying to track his daughter. Yet, with sinking spirit, he realized things were already beyond his control. If indeed the Above Ones had brought Jacob to this valley, then so be it.

He glanced at Lone Walker and saw the look of horror in that noble brave's face.

“I cannot counsel against the will of the All-Father,” Lone Walker slowly replied. “I followed a dream to the Great Water at the edge of the world. But to take the life of one of our people, what kind of vision quest is this?” He struggled to understand his friend's terrible dilemma.

“Perhaps when I have shed blood the Above One will be satisfied and I will be free,” Wolf Lance said.

“Freedom at the price of one of our own,” Lone Walker reminded him. “It cannot be a good thing.”

Wolf Lance nodded, trying to show concern, but an idea had formed. He brightened, having realized Jacob was no Blackfoot. No matter what Lone Walker said.
Has the All-Father provided a way for me to return to my village after all? If blood must be shed, why not that of a white man, a pretender?

“No!” Lone Walker blurted out, reading Wolf Lance's intent in the expression on his face and in his eyes. “Do not even think it.”

But the warning came too late.

The vastness of distant peaks and scalloped ridges held many wonders: forested valleys, icy creeks fed from the runoff of glaciers, cliffs eroded into shapes to match the clouds.

By noon Tewa had brought Jacob to the lower slopes of a battlement that from a distance resembled the snarling visage of a bear partly masked with snow. Lodgepole pines and groves of aspen framed the “muzzle,” which like the rest of the “head” was naked granite, carved by the elements into the face of a beast. Jacob followed without question. He didn't much care what the destination was as long as Tewa walked at his side. The bitter breath of the north wind did not dissuade him. His heart felt light and impervious to any gloom. Happiness, however, did not make him careless. He had hunted with Lone Walker much too long to be caught unawares in enemy country. And so it was that he glimpsed a tendril of what appeared to be smoke curling above the treetops ahead, and he lunged for the young woman and caught her arm and pulled her back behind a dense stand of aspens whose stark white trunks were bent and crooked from the snows of past winters.

“Someone's camp,” Jacob muttered, gesturing in the direction of the smoke with his rifle.

Tewa softly chuckled and motioned for Jacob to continue on through the woods with her. Jacob fell in step alongside the woman. He trusted her but cocked his Hawken all the same.

Fifteen minutes later the trees thinned where the shading pines choked out the aspen. The source of the smoke was at last revealed. White gossamer tendrils spiraled upward through a narrow aperture just beneath the snow-packed “eye” of the bear. About ten yards below the aperture the shadows gave way to a patch of darkness that could only be the mouth of a cave.

“Come,” Tewa said and broke into a distance-eating gait that left Jacob far behind. But only for a moment. He started after the woman, his long-legged stride quickly closing the gap. His yellow hair streamed behind him, his upper torso leaned into the run. Tewa glanced over her shoulder and began to laugh. She won the race to the cave by a length and darted inside—a flash of a smile, a toss of her long black hair, and she was gone.

Jacob had to slow down to keep from breaking a leg as he ducked into the gloom. He almost lost his footing and slid to a halt on the rocky floor as his eyes adjusted to the dimly lit confines of the antechamber. The cave angled back into the hillside. Jacob heard the sound of flints struck together, then the crackle of flame. Amber light delineated a narrow, shoulder-width exit from the antechamber. He heard Tewa laugh again and, at a loss as to what else to do, worked his burly frame through the back exit and stepped into the torchlit room beyond. Here was a chamber roughly over fifty feet in diameter. Thirty feet overhead, the ceiling bristled with stalactites. Stalagmites rose from floor to roof, their rocky veneers sculpted aeons past by an underground stream that was no more than a pool of water eleven feet across in the center of the chamber.

For all the underground beauty of the cave, the first thing Jacob noticed was the warmth. He'd already begun to sweat. He peeled off his capote and buckskin shirt. Steam rose from the surface of the underground spring and drifted up, as if drawn by the column of light streaming through the rent in the ceiling, the aperture Jacob had spied from outside.