People of the Fire (30 page)

 
          
 
“Why would I be expected to go there?"

 
          
 
"Because I'll be busy. I'll-"

 
          
 
"But there are all those Short Buffalo
People there! That hunter! He might-—"

 
          
 
“Quit panicking. Not even a Short Buffalo
hunter would bother you in White Calf's camp. You know better than that.
Besides, the
berdache
, Two Smokes, will be there to
guard you. Even now, after so long, people don't forget Cut Feather's murder.
To Blood Bear, the
berdache
is a reminder of those
days of disgrace. If there's one place Blood Bear won't go, it's White
Calf's."

 
          
 
"But why would I go there? I mean, won't
Blood Bear know that it's him that I'm hiding from? Won't he make it worse when
I come back?"

 
          
 
"Didn't I teach you years ago to trust
me?"

 
          
 
“Well . . . ye

 
          
 
"Good, because you're going for medicine
for your mother-in-law. Wet Rain is sick."

 
          
 
“She's sick? But I saw her just—"

 
          
 
"You know, I might have taught you to
trust me, but you didn't get my brains, girl. Fortunately, Wet Rain's got
plenty of her own. She'll act plenty sick for a couple of days. And your step-father
hates Blood Bear about as much as anyone does. Old Cut Feather was One Cast's
best friend, you know. He thought of him like a father. He'll play his part I
wouldn't have married him after your father died if he hadn't had sense . . .
and cared for you, too.

 
          
 
"So here's what we'll do. I'll sneak back
with a pack and you leave tonight. You know the trail to White Calf's. Go fast,
girl. You can be halfway there by morning. If anyone asks, I'll tell them
you've gone to get medicine for Wet Rain's stomach ache. I'll send word when
it's safe to come back."

 
          
 
“And Blood Bear?"

 
          
 
“He'll believe it."

 
          
 
The stars hadn't passed a hand's breadth
across the sky when a dark figure slipped from the menstrual lodge.

 
          
 
Within moments, Rattling Hooves ducked out
behind her daughter. Thoughtfully she stared down the night-shadowed trail. Elk
Charm would be starting to realize what she'd undertaken. Traveling alone
through the middle of the night on an unfamiliar trail would daunt all but the
most courageous of hunters. Elk Charm would brave the dark, and the possibility
of ghosts, and perhaps even a fall-hungry grizzly. Anything would be better
than Blood Bear.

 
          
 
Rattling Hooves walked wearily down toward the
lodge. With Wet Rain playing sick, she'd have twice the chores to do. The lot
of a second wife could be considerably worse than she got from One Cast and Wet
Rain. Still, she'd always felt like an interloper, intruding on their
happiness. One Cast and Wet Rain had never made her feel less than welcome, but
she couldn't shake the subtle feeling of intruding. She would never share that
intimacy they did. Some people just fit together like that. One Cast and Wet
Rain might have been made as two pieces—male and female—of a unique whole.

 
          
 
Thinking about it, she experienced a pang of
regret. She'd loved like that once. If only he hadn't gone traveling in the
winter. The snow always became treacherous in spring. They hadn't found his
body until almost midsummer. And the hole left by his death could never be filled.

 
          
 
She sent one last nervous look down the trail,
heart-worried about her daughter. What a terrible way to come into womanhood.

 
          
 
* * *

           
 
'' Sometimes I wonder about your faith in the
boy. He s wild, resentful."

 
          
 
"That's the strength of his father,"
Wolf Dreamer reminded him from within the translucent golden hues of the
Spiral.

 
          
 
"I live with his father! Too much of his
insolence has gone into the boy.

 
          
 
"Wolf Bundle, you yourself are created of
disparate pieces. Each has its part in Power. Together we manipulated the
Circles to get the boy. Did you complain then ?''

 
          
 
“My Power wasn't leaking away then. I didn't
experience the sensation of my own slow death. We've taken a terrible risk. We
seen the boy through the Watcher's eyes. You know we can't affect his will. He
will be what he will be. And I see trouble."

 
          
 
"We never had any guarantees. The future
is a murky-place."

 
          
 
"He fights the Dreams. He'll fight us
just as vigorously."

 
          
 
Silence . . .

 
          
 
Behind the boy, a nameless terror stalked the
ridge, the fetid odor of its breath—that of a carrion-feeding bear—warm on the
back of his neck. He tried to look, tried to glance over his shoulder to see
the horror, but his balance fled at every attempt, leaving him flailing his
arms to keep his precarious footing.

 
          
 
Death followed, snapping at his heels He could
imagine the silver drool running in strands from the monster's teeth.

 
          
 
His only escape consisted of a dangerous path
along a knife-edged ridge of sharp gray granite. Sheer wails tell off to either
side, endless, dropping into a dizzying depth. Around him, the clouds scudded
past, partially blotting the deep blue of the sky. Wind batted at him as he
tried to keep his footing on the hazardous slope.

 
          
 
He jumped frantically from one rock to
another, terror powering his leaps over infinity. There, ahead of him, his
mother clung to the rock, blocking the way. She looked back at him with a
sickening anguish in her face. Wind whipped her long black hair, partially
obscuring her features as she blinked against the gale. Her fingers wove into
the very rock, locking her in place.

 
          
 
"Hurry! It's too close. You've got to
keep going, son." The wind ripped his mother's frantic cries away and
hurled them into the vastness. "Go. Climb over me."

 
          
 
As he teetered, unwilling, her face grew
ashen, her skin hard, turning to stone as he watched in horror.

 
          
 
"No!" he cried into the vastness.
The whistling wind sought to knock him off. He could feel the thing behind him
extend its neck and open its corrupt mouth to snap at him.

 
          
 
"Mother?" Desperate, he jumped, the
rounded mass of her back taking his weight.

 
          
 
He could feel the presence of the nightmare
thing behind him, looming up, reaching even as he scrambled to find footing on
the rock that had once been his mother. As he changed his balance, the rock
shifted, grating and vibrating.

 
          
 
Sobbing with fear, he looked down. The rock
with his mother's face cascaded into the depths, debris falling to clatter
against the cliff.

 
          
 
The unseen horror reached for him as he
crabbed along the thin, friable rock. He jumped for a huge flat space that
turned into Chokecherry's back as he landed. The old woman looked up at him, a
crafty smile forming on her lips. But then she shifted, as if trying to pitch
him off into the abyss.

 
          
 
Little Dancer braced his feet, grabbing for
the ridge beyond. He caught a glimpse of Chokecherry's body solidifying into
gray granite and plunging into the depths under his weight. His grip held as
Chokecherry's rock crashed down the precipice in a shower of tumbling
scree
. Teeth chattering, he got his feet under him, pulling
his body back onto the trail and grimacing as the rock cut into his flesh.

 
          
 
Breath catching in his throat, Little Dancer
hurried forward, searching for footing on the treacherous edge, feeling the
claws of death again at his back. A grating of crushed gravel sounded behind
him as a huge weight bore down on the ridge.

 
          
 
Two Smokes looked up at him from underfoot,
the
berdache's
face forming below him in the uneven granite.
Even as he stared down in horror, his friend's eyes dimmed to stone, the rock
shifting and crumbling beneath him. What had been Two Smokes rolled loose to
plunge into the eternity below. Little Dancer threw himself ahead again,
shivering with each gust of wind.

 
          
 
Looking down, he saw that his father now
stared up at him, inevitably turning into stone. Little Dancer began to sob,
forcing himself to scramble across the shifting rock, knowing even as it took
his weight that this too would betray him.

 
          
 
The monstrous thing behind him leaned closer,
the bulk of it obscuring the sun. Its breath choked the wind in his throat.

 
          
 
"I could save you," White Calf's
voice called from somewhere ahead.

 
          
 
Little Dancer's heart pounded with fear as the
rock that had been his father cracked loose and slid sickeningly sideways.

 
          
 
What to do?

 
          
 
Behind him, the horror laughed: "Too
late." Heavy Beaver!

 
          
 
Little Dancer froze, fingers gripping tightly
to the rock that had been his father. The horizon tilted, gravel pelting him as
together they fell into the abyss.

 
          
 
"Fool!" White Calf cried.

 
          
 
Heavy Beaver cackled with glee.

 
          
 
Little Dancer's stomach rose into his throat.
Nausea tickled the back of his tongue and left him dizzy. His father’s
terrified voice shrieked into the nothingness below. Wind howled past his ears,
tearing at his clothes and burning the tears into his blurred eyes as the
faraway rocks rushed up at them.

 
          
 
Falling . . . falling . . .

 
          
 
Little Dancer's eyes jerked open the second
before he knew he hit bottom. A lurching jumped in his gut as he
UK
fevered breath into heaving lungs. He
trembled as the afterimages of the Dream faded to startled wakefulness.

 
          
 
He stared around the dawn-gray meadow and
shivered with the morning chill, seeing the faint, hoary trace of frost on the
leaves. Here, at the edge of the timber, the plants still stood lush and green.
A raven chattered and clacked in the trees behind him. Somewhere in the timber
a loud pop sounded as a squirrel cut fir cones loose and dropped them onto the
deadfall below.

 
          
 
Above, the sky remained shrouded in gray.

 
          
 
He sat up in a cascade of needles from where
he'd burrowed into the duff beneath an old forest giant. Little Dancer
stretched, a gnawing emptiness in his belly.

 
          
 
He crawled out and looked around, snaking
fingers through his long hair to comb the brown needles free. Images from the
Dream haunted him. Dully he braided his hair and started across the meadow. The
night chill cramped his muscles and left him unsure on his feet.

 
          
 
A chickadee greeted the bracing morning while
a squirrel chirred into the crisp air before scrambling from one branch to
another.

 
          
 
Crossing a timbered patch, he encountered a
rocky up-thrust ridge and looked over the edge. Below him the meadow narrowed,
restricted by steep sandstone walls. A fence had been constructed of timber
carefully placed for strength and height to run diagonally across the browning
grass—Hungry Bull's drive line.

 
          
 
Sighing with relief, Little Dancer eased
across the rocks, glancing quickly over his shoulder before starting down the
slope. Even as he reached the level bottoms, a thin tendril of smoke rose from
the trees.

 
          
 
He smiled and forced his wobbly legs forward
in a trot.

 
          
 
Hungry Bill crouched before a small fire, the
freshly killed carcass of a snowshoe hare wide-splayed and roasting on the hot
rocks. With the canny eyes of the hunter, Hungry Bull had already seen him and
raised a hand in greeting.

 
          
 
"Had to get away?"

 
          
 
Little Dancer nodded, coming to sit next to
his father, sharing the moment of camaraderie. "Got lost last night.
Didn't know I was this close."

 
          
 
For long moments they sat in silence.

 
          
 
"How's the trap coming?"

 
          
 
''Almost done, you can help me finish today.
With the first snow, there should be buffalo starting to move down from the
high meadows. There's a herd up in the valley above us. They'll want to follow
this trail. We should be able to get enough to keep through winter." He
raised his eyes to the gray skies. "We'll do fine if we make a kill and it
freezes good and solid. That's the best way. Kill late like this and let it
freeze. The
meat'll
keep all winter."

 
          
 
They ate in silence, Little Dancer's mouth
watering as he tore into the hot flesh of the rabbit.

 
          
 
When bones had been cracked and sucked empty
of marrow, they were thrown into the fire to char into memory. They walked over
to stare at the trap.

 
          
 
"You think this will hold buffalo?"
Little Dancer cocked his head skeptically.

 
          
 
Hungry Bull smiled, narrowing his eyes.
"Part of a hunter's success is to know more of the animals than they know
of themselves." He pointed. "You see how I placed the roots and
branches? See how the sharp points are sticking out? There's a reason for that.
Buffalo
look stupid and half-asleep. But they're
thinking all the time—as Two Smokes found out when he misjudged them at Monster
Bone Springs. Even though they look sleepy and dumb, they're always ready,
waiting . . . and lightning fast on their feet. They can whirl in a blink,
despite how clumsy they look. They don't like to be forced against a wall, you
see. And they have a thin hide that tears easily and they know it.

 
          
 
"So look at how I built this. A good
hunter knows that the buffalo will bear away from the snags. He knows that
they'll want to mill out there in the center, where they can see all around.
The lead cow will take a minute to decide what to do when the way is blocked.
That's why I placed the fence so. I'll want that moment of indecision to drive
a dart into the lead cow."

 
          
 
"And you'll be up on that ledge?"
Little Dancer pointed to a sandstone outcrop slightly above the kill area.

 
          
 
"You've got more hunter in you than I
thought. That's just where I'll be. Not only does a hunter have to know his animals,
he's got to know what he has to work with. That's why the shape is like it is.
This trap could be worked by person. With just the two of us it will work
better We'll need to start the drive and drift them down here. We don't want to
panic them, just urge them down slowly. Then, when they wander into the trap,
I've got to run up there to the point. Meanwhile, you're over behind that stump
there. If they shy from my darts, they drift right into yours."

 
          
 
"Until one panics and breaks down the
fence."

 
          
 
"But by then ... if we haven't panicked
ourselves . . . we'll have killed, or seriously wounded, enough to keep us
through the winter."

 
          
 
"But you don't make a trap like this in
spring."

 
          
 
Hungry Bull propped his hands on his hips.
"Wouldn't work.
Buffalo
act differently in the spring. Cows have new calves. They're more wary,
nervous, because the calves are vulnerable. Old bulls are on edge and acting
protective. Strategies for taking animals have to change with the season.
Doesn't matter how straight or far you can cast a dart if you don't know how to
work the animals. You have to know how they change and think differently with
the seasons, or you're going to starve—or eat plants all your life like the
Anit'ah
!"