In the Season of the Sun (25 page)

“I have broken through here,” Sparrow Woman called to them. As they neared she recognized Little Plume Woman, wife Of Yellow Eagle. Good Bear Woman, Yellow Eagle's sister, hurried past Little Plume Woman.

“See, I told you. It is no wild bear, only Sparrow Woman breaking through the ice.”

“I wasn't worried,” Little Plume Woman replied, too defensively to be believed.

“You were,” Good Bear Woman chided. “You are so funny.” The smaller of the two tilted back her head and had a good laugh. She was a pretty girl with dimpled cheeks, round ample hips, and a full bosom made for nursing the young. As yet she was unmarried but ever hopeful that Otter Tail, Jacob's friend, would find the courage to stand before her father and offer him gifts for the hand of his daughter.

“I am not nearly so funny as the sight of an unmarried woman waiting for big belly to marry her. Otter Tail will never have enough horses or pelts for your father.” Little Plume Woman spoke in a clipped tone of voice. Hers were sharp features, high cheekbones and thin lips drawn back in a humorless smile. Her chin was pointed; her neck, long and regal. Yellow Eagle, despite his game leg, had proved himself an excellent provider. In battle, he called no man his better. Little Plume Woman was proud of him and proud to share his blanket, proud to have been called together in union with him. She enjoyed sharing this happiness and pride with her spinsterish friend.

“Otter Tail will ask for me. He only waits to trap more pelts, that my father will be pleased with his offering,” Good Bear Woman retorted.

“And while the two of you argue, Cold Maker seals the pool of living water I am leaving behind!” Sparrow Woman said, interrupting the quarrel. Listening to such nonsense made her glad she was no longer a young maid, fresh as a sapling, struggling for a place in the sun. She stepped aside as the younger women hurried down the bank. Water sloshed from the jug as she made her way up from the lake. The gray gloom lost no time in muffling the voices of the women at the water's edge.

Snowflakes fluttered against her cheeks and glistened in her thickly braided hair and planted icy kisses on her forehead. She wished she had brought a shawl to cover her head. But wishes were as dust in the wind, unable to be grasped and quickly forgotten. She pressed on, pretending to ignore the cold. In truth, her thoughts went far beyond her own discomfort, rising like prayer smoke to the western mountains to the husband she loved and to her beloved adopted son, the two most important people in her life. They searched the backbone of the world for what? Ghosts? The answer to a mystery?

This winter storm was as gentle as a pup compared to the wild winds and terrible storms sweeping down from the peaks to trap the unwary hunter in the passes. She feared for husband and son, yet refused to believe the worst. After all, Lone Walker had told her long ago, “
I will return to you. I will always return to you.”
She had believed him then when love was young. She could do no less after these years of knowing him and feeling love flower like some eternal bud that refuses even the deadly grasp of winter, that remains and continues and nourishes and endures.

Sparrow Woman hesitated before the lodge of Two Stars. She drew a corner of the entrance flap aside and announced herself. She heard the old one cough and between spasms he bid her enter.

The interior of the tepee was warm and offered blessed relief from the ever-present cold. The tepee wasn't as large as that of Lone Walker, being only about fifteen feet in diameter, but it certainly provided adequate comfort for the blind one and the younger outcast he had taken to wife, Calling Dove.

“I have brought you living water,” Sparrow Woman said and placed the jug on a willow-wood stand.

“I am grateful,” Two Stars sighed. He sat near the fire and fed a couple of thick gnarled branches to the flames. Sparrow Woman marveled that he did not burn himself. But then, the old man possessed many skills. There was none in the village to match Two Stars in arrow making. His were the straightest shafts; his always flew true to the mark.

Sparrow Woman crawled across to Calling Dove's side. She smiled wanly, her normally robust form seemed shrunken into the pallet on which she lay.

“Have you taken any of the food I left?” Sparrow Woman asked.

Calling Dove nodded and indicated a nearby bowl that had once been filled with stewed meat, bread, and broth. Meat juices formed a glaze on the inside.

“I am stronger today,” Calling Dove replied. She pulled a woolen blanket up across her immense bosom. Her round, scarred face wore an expression of gratitude.

“But not strong enough to attend to the one who opened his blanket to her,” Two Stars said in a wounded tone. “I am but a poor sightless man, alone and helpless—”

“As a sly fox,” Sparrow Woman finished the sentence for him. Several parfleches of jerked meat and wild tubers and dried berries were arranged near the old man's bedding, all gifts from other people in the village. Two Stars was loved and respected by all, his wisdom a welcome addition to any council or gathering of tribal elders. Still, he loved to elicit sympathy for his sightless state.

“I have frozen my fingers and braved the Cold Maker's wrath to bring you living water. What more would you ask of me?” Sparrow Woman asked merrily.

This morning his bones ached from the bitter press of winter and Two Stars' mood remained as gloomy as the landscape he could no longer see.

“You could bring word of my daughter and Wolf Lance. You could tell me that I might embrace my granddaughter before I die.”

“I have heard nothing.” Sparrow Woman knelt alongside Two Stars and warmed herself by the fire. “You will have your granddaughter, your Tewa.”

“I fear they are all lost; now your dear ones as well as mine.”

“No,” Sparrow Woman said. “Do not even think it.”

“Don't you?”

“No.”

“Why?” Two Stars turned his sightless eyes toward her.

“Because I am the woman of Lone Walker. And when he leaves, he takes my heart with him. I would know if my heart were lost.”

“Do you never fear?” asked the blind man.

“Always. But never more than I love.”

“The sun has set many times since Lone Walker and Jacob Sun Gift rode from Medicine Lake,” Two Stars glumly recalled.

“Then today is a good day,” Sparrow Woman said. “Cold Maker has hidden the sunrise and sunset. We will not need to count them.” She stood alongside the old one and touched his shoulder.

“The time grows close when I will enter the Great Circle and see the Above Ones and stand before the All-Father. If only I could believe that I will hold the flesh of my flesh before I die.”

The longing in his voice was no pretense, Sparrow Woman realized. How she wished she could find the right words to comfort him. His seamed and wrinkled countenance was like a map of life: here, a line of suffering; there, his brow bore the scars of anger and violence; and see how his leathery cheeks were creased from laughter.

“Believe in my husband. I did, and he brought me a gift from the sun.” Sparrow Woman squeezed his bony shoulder, then, with a reassuring smile toward Calling Dove, she walked out of the tepee and into the thickly falling snow.

How peaceful here as if the village were deserted. She heard only the noise of her own passing as she returned to her lodge. The wind began to increase, gusting gently, swirling the precipitation and building drifts against the north side of the lodges. A baby's hungry outcry pealed through the deer-hide walls of a nearby lodge. Sparrow Woman noted with relief that she wasn't alone, after all, in this snow-shrouded landscape.

She picked her way through the village, using the decorated walls of the lodges as guideposts. She kept the cluster of tepees that belonged to the Kit Fox Clan to her right. To her left, the Bowstring Clan had adorned their lodges with pictographs of battles, of warring braves armed with bows and loosed arrows rampant against a background of buckskin.

She turned back toward the outskirts of the village and after what seemed a lifetime, stopped about thirty feet from her tepee. She looked past her lodge to the snow-swept expanse that stretched back down the valley. She remained motionless as if entranced by something unseen out beyond the storm, something that waited and watched.

She wanted to cry out, to alert the village, and yet she held her tongue. She was loath to give herself away. Her throat felt tight as if she were gripped in a stranglehold by some invisible giant. But she had to find the will and the strength to warn the village.

Perhaps her senses were playing tricks on her. She could not see or hear, try as she might, beyond the earthbound clouds. And yet Sparrow Woman felt to the depths of her being the approach of a stranger out of the gray clouds and swirling gloom.

Now!
An inner voice warned her.
Run!

And still she held her ground, rooted in place by the turmoil in her breast. Fear no longer gripped her. She had misjudged her premonition. A new emotion welled within her, threatened to burst, became impossible to contain. She mouthed a name, no louder than a whisper—didn't she yell it—then started forward, a single hesitant step. One followed another as ahead—and the distance was deceiving—riders materialized out of the storm, as if conjured by the wind and wishes, the answered prayers of an aching heart.

Sparrow Woman ran toward them, casting aside all dignity, and called their names.

“Lone Walker, my husband, Jacob, my son.”

They saw her while the lodges of the village were but ephemeral shadows hidden behind veils of wind-whipped snow.

Jacob held back and rode alongside Tewa. He reached out and took her hand in his. “We are home,” he said.

“Home,” Tewa repeated as if sounding the word for the first time. She tightened her grip, taking comfort in Jacob's certainty and strength.

Lone Walker rode on ahead, reached down and caught Sparrow Woman, and lifted her into his arms.

28

S
ing a song of flesh and oneness, of ripe desire, of hunger and thirst and sweet appeasement. And yet, to be lost in love is all the singing and all the song a man or woman needs.

Lone Walker sighed contentedly and rolled on his side. Sparrow Woman nestled her warm, silken thighs against him, and with every breath her breast, insistent, pressed and slowly rekindled in him an earlier, spent passion. Four days ago, he had come down from the lost places, the far-removed places, the windswept passes and high mountain meadows. He had brought Jacob home, and Tewa.

Lone Walker remembered with satisfaction the expression on Two Stars' face as the old one embraced his granddaughter. And Calling Dove, though weak from her illness, had fussed over Tewa with motherly concern. Word had spread throughout the village, and well-wishers had defied the winter storm to welcome Two Stars' granddaughter. Lone Walker grinned, recalling how Jacob complained that far too many young men had noted Tewa's arrival. They called her She-Wolf and Warrior Woman, for she dressed like a brave and rode as well as any warrior, and on the very first clear morning had displayed her talents with bow and rifle. Then again, was it any wonder that the daughter of the legendary Wolf Lance should be so skilled?

“Where is our son this night?” Sparrow Woman asked, sighing softly in her husband's arms. The crackling fire underscored her question. Their shadows, entwined, danced upon the buffalo-hide walls of the lodge.

“Where else?”

“Two Stars' again.”

“And taken his blanket and willow flute.” Lone Walker glanced past his wife's shoulder at his son's shield and rifle and willow backrest. “He has left something behind for us to remember him by.”

Sparrow Woman frowned. Her displeasure was apparent. Her limbs tensed. She no longer responded to Lone Walker's caress.

“You wished for him to no longer be alone. Now when he plays his pipe and invites a woman to his blanket, you frown and grow sour as green honey. What song is it that can find the truth in a woman's heart?”

“Wolf Lance, Tewa's father, is the truth I fear,” Sparrow Woman replied.

“He rides the backbone of the world,” Lone Walker said.

“Are you so certain?” Sparrow Woman's brown eyes studied the writhing flames.

“No,” Lone Walker said, unable to lie to the woman who knew his heart so well. He rose from her side and knelt by the fire, added a few chunks of wood and rearranged the stones to better reflect the heat. The firelight played on his naked torso as muscles rippled the length of his battle-scarred flesh. He gathered a piece of charcoal, crushed it, moistened the ashes with spittle and shreds of boiled meat, smeared a stone with the black paste, and dropped the stone in the center of the fire. The spittle boiled away, the meat sizzled and burned, the crushed embers glowed with new life. Then Lone Walker began to chant, softly.

“Great One,

Source of all surprise,

You see everything on this earth.

Hear my song prayer though I have broken your will

And brought the child out of the Sacred Hills.

I bind my guilt to you, All-Father.

To where the sky meets the land

Let no harm befall my son.

Among the bones of the rain, protect him.”

Lone Walker's voice trailed off and despite his proximity to the fire, he shivered. He knew the Above Ones had heard him. But as to the will of the Great Spirit, only time would tell. His limbs trembled yet again. Cold Maker stalked the land, stole among the lodges, waited outside the tepee walls. Lone Walker glanced toward his wife. Sparrow Woman's eyes glistened with tears as she opened the blanket to him. Her warmth drew him. Lone Walker returned to her side, slid against her and into her and loved her while the smoke from his spirit fire coruscated upwards and dissipated against the moon's frozen glare.

Jacob waited beneath the cold sky. He wasn't alone among the comical silhouettes of Piegan lodges. He spied other young braves moving silently toward the tepees of the maidens they had chosen to court. Moonlight twinkled like scattered diadems upon the frost-carpeted earth. The starry heavens, like a vaulted ceiling that stretched from ridge to ridge, roofed the entire valley of Medicine Lake. Harsh and chill and lovely lay the night. But Jacob was warm in his heavy woolen blanket as he stood a few yards from the entrance to Two Stars' lodge. Summoning his courage, he drew a reed flute from his medicine pouch. He rubbed the flute between his hands to warm the wood, then with his fingers upon the tone holes he had whittled with his knife, put the instrument to his lips and blew softly.