People of the Earth (71 page)

 
          
 
Larkspur snorted and slapped her hands
together. "What's the matter with them?" She looked around, adopting
a puzzled expression. "Did I say something wrong?"

 
          
 
Raucous laughter rose from the people.

 
          
 
"Maybe they're just having an off
day," Bone Ring added. "Now perhaps we can get back to the Sun
People. My friends, we'd better wake up before we find ourselves mourning
warriors and fearing to go to sleep at night. I want to know what we're going
to do."

 
          
 
Larkspur shook her head. "This is going
to be a Gathering I could sleep through. Sun People? To show you that I bear
Three Forks no ill will for their . . . um, let's call it imagination, I agree
with
Owlclover
when it comes to Sun People. But I
would not want my good friend Bone Ring to think I slight her worries. I offer
this for your consideration: When the first of the Sun People show up, we'll
send runners to all the camps. Call up all our hunters and chase them back v
Bone Ring, your Little Toe is a fast runner. Yellow Star has a couple of good
men at Warm Wind. We can all be called in time. The first small parties that
cross the
Sideways
Mountains
can be tracked down and killed. We'll send
one or two of them scurrying back over the mountains to tell the others.

 
          
 
Bone Ring studied the council. "Will we
agree to that? Will it be sworn here, on our honor? The first camp that
discovers Sun People, or sign of them, will call the others? Everyone will send
hunters to drive them off?"

 
          
 
"I will swear," Larkspur called out.
"Bad Water and Warm Wind camps can count on Round Rock." She grinned.
"If we ever see one of the Sun People, that is."

 
          
 
One by one the other clan leaders spoke their
agreement and made their promises.

 
          
 
Bone Ring nodded her satisfaction. "They
won't come any time soon. They may not even come this far at all. But next
year? The year after that? Who can tell?"

 
          
 
Larkspur stepped to the spot
Owlclover
had left and seated herself. "Besides
witches who aren't and far-off Sun People, what's the talk been?"

 
          
 
That evening, as the council broke up, Black
Hand settled beside Larkspur. "Thank you. You handled that very
well."

 
          
 
She grunted and patted him on the leg.
"There will still be talk once they have had time to think about it. That
green fire in the sky will be mentioned again."

 
          
 
"
Owlclover
was
mad as a rabid skunk."

 
          
 
Larkspur waved it away. "There wasn't any
other way than to rub her face in it. She's never been too smart. A clever
leader would have turned that all around on me—and she might have if I'd given
her a chance. In the meantime, you and Bitterbrush had better move around among
the camps. Laugh, talk, tell jokes, and be friendly. It's difficult for a
person to believe that the fellow telling ribald jokes at his fire is really a
witch."

 
          
 
"I know," Black Hand muttered.
"
Owlclover
lost a lot of respect here today. She
won't forget it until she dies. If I'm any judge, she was ready to commit
murder."

 
          
 
"I suppose," Larkspur agreed.
"But at least it won't be yours."

 
          
 
"And what do you think about the Sun
People?"

 
          
 
Larkspur blinked to soothe her hot, irritated
eyes. "Sun People? Here? That'll be the day. So what if they do come? Look
at the size of the Gathering. Do you seriously think a band of starving
warriors could stand against the assembled might of the Earth People?"

 
          
 
Black Hand shook his head. "No. And we
know the territory better than they do, too."

 
          
 
Larkspur smacked her gums. "That's right.
And they know it."

 
          
 
Still Water pulled up where the trail led down
through the
caprock
to Singing Stones' shelter. The
Wind
Basin
stretched before them—a vista that stopped
the heart. White Ash sighed as she stared out over the vast basin. Still Water
shuffled his foot nervously, gravel grating. "We're back."

 
          
 
"We could just keep going," White
Ash answered dully. "We could follow the trail down into the basin, go
clear across it. Find a place out there beyond the Gray Wall, beyond the
Red
Dirt
Basin
. Maybe someplace down around
Sand
Wash
—or even south of there."

 
          
 
"We could/' He pinched his lips between
worn teeth. "We could make a lodge, learn the plants . . . and trap
rabbits and deer. We could find a place to winter that had a southern exposure,
then move up into the trees during the summer. There's pinion pine down there.
The nuts fall like rain."

 
          
 
"And make wonderful breads.
Yampa
grows down there, and four-wing saltbush.
I've heard the Traders tell of a land where sandstone arches over the rivers
and redroot 1 grows so thick you have to empty your moccasins of seeds after
walking through it."

 
          
 
"The winters are mild there. Left Hand
told me. Biscuit root grows on the slopes, and sego lily and mariposa cover the
ground."

 
          
 
"Ducks come and winter on the lakes. We
could net them by the tens," White Ash said dreamily. "I could live
for a long time on ducks. I know a way of roasting them, of cooking them in
their juices so the meat falls from the bones."

 
          
 
"And we could fish the rivers, make nets
and cast them out into the deep water. The fish ought to grow big in the
south."

 
          
 
"It would be a place to raise children
without worrying if a war party would kill them. Would you like that? Would you
like to see your children grow and smile in the sun?"

 
          
 
He nodded, a rending in his heart. "A son
. . . and a daughter, to teach all kinds of things to. We could show them how
Spider builds a web, and what birds do when they make a nest."

 
          
 
She swallowed hard and gripped his hand.
"You and I could be together. We could hold each other in the night and
lie under the robes and love each other. We could do that, Still Water. We
could live together forever if we just kept going."

 
          
 
"You and I, we'd be happy. We've seen too
much, been too miserable. There's a future down there past the southern
horizon—a thing to hope for, to build for."

 
          
 
Her hand tightened on his. “Grandchildren.
Think of that. After our children found mates, we'd have time together. The
children could do the work and you and I could sit in the sun and tell
ourselves stories. We could look into each other's eyes and laugh while the
world went crazy up here."

 
          
 
“We could," he whispered and closed his
eyes, seeing it in his mind: Sunshine shone golden on a mud-plastered earth
lodge. Smoke rose in a blue twist from the smoke hole. A drying rack groaned
under the weight of goosefoot and
yampa
. He saw White
Ash grinning at him, squinting in the brilliant sun. She reached for him with
firm brown arms and hugged him close. In the background the happy squeals of
their children split the pleasant air. He gazed fondly into her loving eyes—and
the vision shimmered, feathering away on the sides until only the dim silver of
tears remained.

 
          
 
“Is that so much to ask?" White Ash
wondered.

 
          
 
When he looked at her, she had her eyes
closed, living what she spoke. His soul melted. “We could leave the Wolf Bundle
with Singing Stones. He could care for it."

 
          
 
“We could." She mouthed the words
soundlessly.

 
          
 
But other thoughts crowded Still Water's happy
ones: Left Hand's final farewell; the bodies of the dead outside the Wolf
People's last camp—bodies that gurgled in the night. The memories would remain
to haunt White Ash and himself— the knowledge of what they'd left behind.

 
          
 
The pack on his shoulder grew heavier, as if
the Wolf Bundle had begun to weigh more. Visions of the future—of what Brave
Man would Dream—spun through his head: the stinking mines, the wasted forests,
the eroding mountains. People would labor like ants. Brave Man's Dream.

 
          
 
Still Water clutched at his stomach.

 
          
 
They stood in silence looking off to the
south. The wish for peace built until it ached in his soul.

 
          
 
She dropped his hand and covered her face,
shoulders slumping.

 
          
 
He placed his arm around her and
snugged
her against him.

           
 
"Such a
beautiftil
Dream, Still Water. So . . . beautiful."

 
          
 
"I know."

 
          
 
He took one last look at the south, and his
soul cried out for what would never be. "Maybe we can Dream it for someone
else." He started down the path to Singing Stones' shelter .. . and
whatever waited for them there.

 
          
 
Wind Runner walked in the lead as they crossed
the divide in the pass through the Sideways Mountains. He stopped and stared
out over the basin that spread to the south.
Aspen
came to stand beside him. She raised a hand
to shield her eyes against the summer glare.

 
          
 
Before them lay the
Wind
Basin
, the land patterned by mottled
gray-and-brown hills hemmed by mountains to the west, while a distant
gray-white ridge bordered the southern end. More mountains rose in the eastern
distance, black humps against the far horizon.

 
          
 
The long procession of Black Point came to a
halt, staring, as the clan reached the crest. To either side of the pass,
rugged peaks rose in cracked and sundered uplifts of dull red granite. Snow
still clung in the protected pockets.

 
          
 
Hot Fat panted after the long climb as he took
a place beside Wind Runner. Sage Ghost came next. One Man and Black Moon joined
them.

 
          
 
"The
Wind
Basin
... the land of the Earth People,"
Sage Ghost told them. "Their territory stretches farther than you can see.
Over that gentle rise to the east is a broad, grassy plain where buffalo graze
along the
Elk River
. Beyond that, not even I have gone. Only
the Traders. On the other side of that high gray ridge to the south is a land
told of only in tales. Supposedly a high basin filled with red earth and good
tool stone lies there. South of that, the Traders say, is a country of uplifted
rims where bones made of rock can be found washing out of the soil."

 
          
 
Sage Ghost pointed to the southwest.
"Those are called the
Monster
Mountains
. On the other side is the Sage Grouse
River. It runs south so far that only legends tell where it leads. I have heard
that it runs through places where sandstone rises almost to the sky and then
flows into a canyon so deep it goes clear through the earth."

 
          
 
He pointed farther to the west. "Down
that way, many days' journey beyond the Sage Grouse River, is a huge country of
sagebrush and greasewood. Down there is a lake filled with water so salty a man
can't drink it. The people who live in that land dig salt from the
ground."

 
          
 
“And to the east?" Hot Fat asked.

 
          
 
Sage Ghost gestured. "Out there are
plains like those east of where the Fat Beaver River joins the
Dangerous
River
. Many buffalo live out there—but little
water can be found. The Traders tell that a man can walk for days and see
nothing but grass, and they say the only trees that grow are the cottonwoods
that follow the river bottoms. Between those rivers a man can walk and
walk."

 
          
 
"And straight south?" Wind Runner
asked.

 
          
 
"The
Tall
Mountains
," Sage Ghost told him. "Mountains
so high they touch the sky. A Trader told me that no man can climb those
mountains; if he did, angry Spirits who live up there would eat him."

 
          
 
One Man chuckled. "I've never found
anything on high mountains but a good view and a lot of snow. Perhaps we'll let
the Spirits keep those high mountains. It's what's under them that concerns
me."

 
          
 
"How about game?" Black Moon asked.

 
          
 
"This basin holds buffalo and antelope
and deer. Enough to feed us and then some. The same, so I've been told, with
the
Red
Earth
Basin
beyond the Gray Wall—and in the Sage Grouse
valley as well."

 
          
 
"And these plants the people eat?"
Aspen
asked. "They grow everywhere?"

 
          
 
Sage Ghost laughed and lifted his muscular
arms as if to embrace the land before them. "More than the Earth People
can use. They take only what they need. The rest they leave for the Spirits who
guard places."

 
          
 
"Spirits." One Man grunted.
"We'll see who is stronger. Spirits who guard places—or Thunderbird, who
flies over the whole world. I'll bet my darts on Thunderbird."

 
          
 
“That's the Gray Deer River you see
there." Sage Ghost pointed at a thin band of deeper green. "The Earth
People call it the
Spirit
River
on this side of the
Sideways
Mountains
. Above the Earth People Camp—where I stole
White Ash—it supposedly runs into a mountain and comes out of the rock lower
down. The Earth People think there's Power in that. They go up and cast gifts
into the hole so the water can take it to the Spirits in the mountain. They
think if the Spirits are happy, they'll bless the water and let it continue to
run out the other side."