People of the Fire (13 page)

 
          
 
She sniffed, reshuffling her burden. "My
first human name was Green Willow." She chuckled, gesturing at the country
around them. " Shows you how long ago that was. You Ye Hungry Bull?
Supposed to be quite a hunter, I hear tell."

 
          
 
He swallowed hard. "I'm the best among my
people. 1 '

 
          
 
She glanced at the trophy dangling limply from
his left hand. "Well, if a bushy-tailed packrat's all you got ... I
wouldn't want to be one of your people." Her critical eye took in the
scratches and scuffing of his clothing. "And it looks like quite a chase.
Was that you I heard bashing through the sage like a Monster in rut? All that
for a packrat?"

 
          
 
He bristled, straightening, heat rising in his
face, ready to lash out in anger—but caution held him. In the old stories,
proud young men like him got in trouble doing that. The Wise One Above turned
them into frogs and snakes and worms and such.

 
          
 
And there was that look in her eye—a Spirit
Power look-like she could see his soul inside, like she knew so very, very much
more than he. And he knew her. He was sure of it.

 
          
 
"Green
Willow
? Are you ... I mean, are you real . . . in
this world, I mean?" His throat had gone dry. What would an old woman be
doing up here?

 
          
 
She grinned wickedly, exposing worn yellow
teeth. "As real as you. And judging from your recent behavior, a whole lot
brighter."

 
          
 
He flushed, lowering his eyes in shame.

 
          
 
"Where were you going when I saw you down
there? A camp of the People around here someplace?"

 
          
 
He swallowed, pointing with darts to the
southwest. "Four days' walk. Down along the
Moon
River
. Three of us, Black Crow and Three Toes,
and me, we came to hunt. I tried circling to the north."

 
          
 
"Haven't had much luck, huh?" She
shook her head, hawking to spit onto the cobbles. "Well, I've seen buffalo
sign. One bunch, nervous and spooky. That was up above the hogbacks." She
pointed over her shoulder.

 
          
 
"That's not that far. Only a half day's
walk." He paused. "You came from there? That's getting too close to
the An-
it'ah
."

 
          
 
"They leave me alone. Where's your
hunting camp?"

 
          
 
He pointed back to the east.

           
 
"Hmm. And the People are south? 4 * She
rubbed her chin. "Tell you what. You go get your friends. Meet me at
Monster Bone Springs tonight."

 
          
 
"Monster Bone . . . Why there? I mean,
that's a Power place where the Hero Twins came and killed the Monsters and ate
them. You mean, you ..." Words failed as he backed a step.

 
          
 
"Hah!" She snorted, dry humor
curling her lips. "So the stories go, huh? Hero Twins? Men killed the
Monsters. Just like we kill buffalo." She paused, looking sadly at the
rocky ground before her. "Oh, I don't know why it bothers me. Changing . .
. everything's changing, turning, making itself into something different."

 
          
 
Hungry Bull waited, nervous. "We're told
not to go there. That spirits like the Trickster will take our soul."

 
          
 
She pinned his eyes with hers. "Indeed?
And I suppose that same lunatic tells you to look up women's skirts? Who tells
you such things?"

 
          
 
Wincing at her taunting, he told her,
"Heavy Beaver, he Dreams—"

 
          
 
"I remember him as nothing more than a
sullen kid. What happened? He get touched by more than bad humor?"

 
          
 
"He's a powerful—"

 
          
 
"Maybe. Or he's fooled everyone into
thinking he is. I'll wait and see. Usually you can see Power in a child. See it
in their eyes, the way they move. Where's Horn Core?"

 
          
 
"Dead."

 
          
 
She gave him a steely look, lips pinching.
"When?"

 
          
 
"Maybe three years now. No one knows why.
He broke his leg and it grew together ... but it never stopped hurting. Then it
swelled up, poisoned from the inside, like happens sometimes. Heavy Beaver said
it was because Horn Core called on bad spirits. And that's why Buffalo Above is
punishing us . . . keeping Rain Man away. Horn Core never had the right Power
to keep him—"

 
          
 
"Dung and flies, boy! Horn Core was a
Dreamer in the old sense of the Power. Heavy Beaver? He's like a child who
would hunt buffalo with twigs."

 
          
 
"No! I mean, never say things like that.
Heavy Beaver will Sing a Curse over you . . . make the evil ghosts come
and—"

           
 
"That tapeworm? Curse me?*' She cackled
happily again. "That'll be the day!" Then she paused, another thought
striking her. "I see . . . it's all starting to make sense now. Curious
how the Power of the Dreaming works. Curious ..." She lost her line of
thought, eyes going vacant as she stared out into space, seeing something far
beyond Hungry Bull and the sun-washed ridge top.

 
          
 
"Who are you? I've seen you before
someplace."

 
          
 
"Huh?" She started, vision focusing
again. "I told you, they called me—"

 
          
 
"Who are you now?"

 
          
 
She smiled wistfully at him, raising an
eyebrow to
recrease
the wrinkles in her forehead.
"Met you in your lodge one night. Sage Root had just lost a child. Boy
child as I recall. I needed a mother, a healthy woman with milk to give. No
wonder you don't remember. That night, you were pretty upset. You hardly
noticed me."

 
          
 
Breath caught in his throat. "White Calf
I They said you-"

 
          
 
"Rose into the sky on a whirlwind."
She grunted. "I know. Unlike ravens who chatter all the time about
important things, men like to carry on with a lot of nonsense."

 
          
 
He gaped.

 
          
 
"The boy's doing all right?"

 
          
 
He nodded, still undone, remembering that
night, remembering the grief in Sage Root's eyes as she cuddled her dead child.
Then, out of the dark, came Horn Core and the old woman, a bundle wrapped in her
arms. A gift, she'd said. A child given by the Spirits for one taken.

 
          
 
His concern then hadn't been for old women out
of the night, but for Sage Root. So he'd taken his dead son from her arms,
replacing it with the living. Awed, he'd watched as Sage Root's breast accepted
the child. And when he'd turned back, White Calf had gone. No one could find
her in camp that next day.

 
          
 
Before he left to start his own band, Elk
Whistle told him about White Calf and the wounded
berdache
.
She'd found Elk Whistle out hunting in these same hills, taking him to Monster
Bone Springs, where the child and the wounded
berdache
had been.

           
 
Horn Core had filled in more details, talking
of White Calf's Power, of how she lived high in the
Buffalo
Mountains
, making magic. Other than that, little was
known of her, at least, little that people would talk about.

 
          
 
She smacked her lips, shaking her head.
"Enough of this. What I need you to do is get on to your hunting camp.
Pick up your friends and I'll meet you at Monster Bone Springs. I'll have your
packrat stewed by the time you get there. Then we can all hear the exploits of
your hunt."

 
          
 
He nodded, mind wheeling.

 
          
 
"You
gonna
be
there?"

 
          
 
"Y-yes."

 
          
 
White Calf lifted the packrat to stare
thoughtfully into its dull eyes. "Best hunter among the People, huh? Looks
like you sat on it!"

 
          
 
Without thinking, he admitted, "I did. It
was going to get away again."

 
          
 
Three Toes whistled as he flaked a new point
from a finely prepared translucent brown
chert
. From
Knife River
, far to the north, he'd traded for the
superb material. With skilled hands, he scrubbed the edges of the tool on
coarse sandstone grooved from years of such use. Testing the rounded edge with
a thumb, he nodded and pulled a use-polished deer-antler baton from his pouch.

 
          
 
Still whistling, he sat back on his rock and
began striking broad thinning flakes from the
chert
.
Patterning his strokes with the skill of a master, he caught each flake as it
came free, letting it drop with the delicate clinking chime of perfect
stonework. Among the People, no one made better points. When Three Toes worked
stone, his soul went into the crafting, permeating the very rock.

 
          
 
He sat before a smoldering sagebrush fire, a
pile of jack-rabbit bones still blackening in the center of the stone-filled
hearth. Two packs and a brush shelter lay at the peripheries of the camp. Here
and there, cratered stipples in the soil marked spots where they'd twisted sage
out of the ground for the fire. Sagebrush made a wonderful fire. From the moment
it was placed on the coals, it virtually torched, flames leaping for the sky in
a roar. Then the fine laminar structure of the hard dense wood collapsed and
the coals burned for days. When stones were dropped on top to absorb and
radiate the heat, a man could cook on such a fire for a long time, or roast
meat, or pile a hand's thickness of dirt over the whole and sleep warm—even in
the coldest of weather.

 
          
 
Three Toes paused to wipe sweat from his high
forehead and look up at the point where Black Crow sat. He stopped short,
missing the dark silhouette of Black Crow's figure against the sky. Game?
Studying the slope, he finally spotted his friend winding down through the
scrubby sage.

 
          
 
Returning to his whistling, Three Toes used
his coarse sandstone to scrub the brittle edge off the long
lanceolate
point to make a platform. When the platform looked right, he wrapped his point
in thick buffalo hide and pulled his elk brow-tine punch from the pouch.
Placing the punch tip just so on the platform, he began pressing long thin
flakes from the point to create the final edge and shape.

 
          
 
To the snap-snap of his flaking, his whistle
mocked the meadowlarks and redwing blackbirds. He warbled like the finches and
trilled like robins, eliciting responses from within the tall sage that
clustered around the drainage under the terrace where they camped.

 
          
 
"Hungry Bull's coming," Black Crow
called from the slope, his presence announced by cascading gravel and cobbles.
"He's in a hurry."