People of the Fire (32 page)

 
          
 
"Ah! Elk Charm!"

 
          
 
His crimson features went bright.

 
          
 
Tanager grinned. "Well, you and Blood
Bear are in the same fix. She's not here. She went down to the witch's."

 
          
 
Snaps Horn gaped. "But there's Short
Buffalo People there."

 
          
 
"Uh-huh, but there's no Blood Bear. And
no you!"

 
          
 
He bellowed and leapt for her. She danced
away, ducking effortlessly under his grasping arms. Dashing away like the wind,
her heart exalted. She had her chase!

 
          
 
Three Toes pulled at the long braid hanging
over his left shoulder. The crawling feeling in his gut didn't diminish no
matter how hard he pulled. He stood on an isolated outcrop of gray limestone
thrust far enough up from the spine of the mountain to allow him to see over
the surrounding wall of fir trees.

 
          
 
The crisp air carried a pungent tang of
conifer and damp earth. High above, a golden eagle shifted on the ghostly thermals.
An elk bugled shrilly and angrily somewhere to the west in the black timber.

 
          
 
Cloud-capped peaks rose to the north, a white
dusting of snow visible below the punctured belly of the fluffy clouds. Between
him and the peaks stretched an endless expanse of uplifted and rugged country
swelling to rounded summits, broken ridges, and cracked-looking canyons—all of
it carpeted with a thick mosaic of trees. Ancient burns made a patchwork of
forest where lightning had caught the old growth with a high fuel load during
the drought.

 
          
 
He looked back to the south, grinding his
molars. More broken country—but the peaks weren't as tall, and he couldn't see
any snowfall there. A taller ridge rose to the west and obscured the view in
that direction. Traveling east couldn't even be considered since an impassable
jagged canyon had been gouged through the mountain's bones.

 
          
 
"Well?" Black Crow called up.

 
          
 
Three Toes filled his lungs full to bursting
and exhaled slowly, savoring the feeling. "We're lost."

 
          
 
"Great!" Black Crow slapped angry
hands to his sides. "And the
Anit'ah
know all
the trails up here. That makes me feel just wonderful!"

 
          
 
Three Toes took another breath, wondering just
how many more he'd get if they didn't find White Calf.

 
          
 
Little Dancer paused for a second to catch his
breath and rest his quivering legs. To lessen the load on his hips and knees,
he bent double, bracing his arms on his kneecaps to support the weight. His
ankles didn't hurt, but everything else did.

 
          
 
The pack on his back had to weigh nearly as
much as he did. The broad leather of the tumpline cut into the skin on his
forehead—long since gone itchy and numb from lack of blood. Despite the weight,
he couldn't help but smile.

 
          
 
His first buffalo! Under the guidance of his
father, they'd worked the trap perfectly. Hungry Bull had known exactly what
the buffalo would do. Together they'd cautiously pushed the animals down the
valley and into the trap.

 
          
 
Sprinting to his controlling position, Hungry
Bull had driven his first dart deep into the lead cow's side. His second dart
penetrated a younger cow's rib cage. As the rest began milling, they'd stayed
well clear of the sharp snags woven into the trap fence.

 
          
 
Little Dancer's chance came as a young cow
backed away from the killing area, nostrils distended, head lowered as she
grunted at the smell of blood. The shot had been perfect. From no more than ten
paces, he'd driven his dart from slightly behind, through the diaphragm and
into the lungs. The young cow had jumped, kicked out behind her, and puffed a
frightened breath. Moaning, she'd trotted forward from the group—and fallen
over to wheeze and bleed her life away on the red-matted grass.

 
          
 
One by one, they killed seven of the buffalo
before the milling bunch crowded a crazed cow into the fence. She dropped her
chin, goaded by the branches, and with one toss of her head, demolished most of
the fence, goring one of her fellows in the process. In the melee that
followed, all but the desperately wounded had fled down the valley, seeking the
safety of the winter range below.

 
          
 
Little Dancer had stopped short then, feeling
the awe of having killed so large a beast with his hand-crafted dart. Under
White Calf's tutelage, he'd breathed Spirit Power into wood, stone, and
binding. The act of knapping out the fine
chert
into
finished points had left his fingers laced with cuts. Enough of his blood had
grimed the razor-edged points to imbue them with soul and the power to kill.

 
          
 
Now it had all come full circle. He sucked the
cool air into his lungs, too happy to care that his leg muscles burned from the
added weight. He, Little Dancer, brought his first meat back to camp. In the
joy of that occasion, even the prospect of facing White Calf didn't matter so
much.

 
          
 
He steeled himself, and straightened, joints
complaining. Blinking against the stress, he started the last couple of lengths
to White Calf's rock shelter.

 
          
 
He didn't even hear his father's approach.
"You all right?"

 
          
 
"I think my back's broken. I keep waiting
to hear my bones crack and snap."

 
          
 
"You'll get used to it."

 
          
 
"Oh . . . sure, and I'll be two hands
shorter!"

 
          
 
He swallowed against his dry throat and forced
himself to stare at the comforting hollow of White
Calfs
shelter. Not far now, only a little while longer. Pace by burning pace he made
it, gasping and wheezing up the last little rise, taking short quick steps.

 
          
 
"A little farther, that's all," his
father's voice soothed.

 
          
 
He started across the trampled grass, all set
to shout and drop the load—when the girl stepped out.

           
 
Girl? He stopped, blinking, lifting his head
without thinking. Suddenly off balance, the load pulled him over backwards. His
arms flailed futilely in the air. He yipped as he tumbled, the pack almost
breaking his neck as he sat down too hard.

 
          
 
Lights flashed in his eyes, the world
spinning. He barely felt his feet slam down hard in the dust.

 
          
 
He flushed at the girl's tinkling laughter.

 
          
 
"How does it feel?" Wolf Dreamer
asked, the haze rippling with his voice.

 
          
 
“As if I were evaporating. Power dissipates.
Blood Bear wastes. Every time he mocks, that which I am is less. At night, when
he sleeps, I play with his life, knowing I could snuff him like a burning twig
in the dirt."

 
          
 
"Things have changed. Blood Bear is the
cause of it."

 
          
 
"The girl?"

 
          
 
Wolf Dreamer's voice gentled. "I am
worried. We could lose the boy to love. I know the Power of it. I know how love
can wind itself up in the Power and lead to disaster. Once, I, too, came close
to disaster because of love.''

 
          
 
"I may be diminished, but I could still
reach out, remove the threat created by Elk Charm. She is nothing."

 
          
 
"You are angry; you always wish to strike
out. I would . . . well, grant him time I never had. Perhaps she's a way to
reach him. Overcome the damage Sage Root did. The Watcher will know."

 
          
 
"Don't hesitate too long, Wolf Dreamer.
The way humans experience time works against us now. I feel that we're coming
to the end . . . one way or another, and very soon."

            
Life worked in a
curious fashion, Blood Bear decided as he trotted along, wary eyes on the trees
around him. He'd left in search of a wayward girl he hoped to fill with his
child.

            
Instead, he'd
stumbled onto the tracks of Short Buffalo People in the heart of his domain.
The sting of last year's raid still ate at him.

            
They'd come in the
early morning as the sun grayed the eastern horizon. In the confusion that
followed, Blood Bear had charged out, darts in hand, to see the Spirit Dreamer
he'd observed the day he'd stolen the Wolf Bundle, singing and exhorting
warriors to kill the Red Hand.

            
A smoldering anger
refused to die as he thought about that day. Perhaps, had he remained, he could
have rallied his people to fight back. Instead, his first thought had been that
the Short Buffalo wanted to steal the Wolf Bundle back. If they had, they might
have broken his hold on the Red Hand.

            
To have lost the
Bundle once was bad enough, but twice? Unthinkable!

            
So he'd grabbed up
the Bundle and run. The Red Hand had not stayed to fight, seeing his own
inglorious retreat. His warriors fled, too, lost heart at his flight, and broke
under the attack, leaving the camp to the howling, dancing Short Buffalo
People. They looted everything and burned what was left. A man and two women
had been killed, darts catching them in the backs as they ran. Some children
had been captured along with a couple of women.

            
Disaster, all in all.

            
Now he had another chance.
Now he could lead the Red Hand in retaliation against their enemy. Of course.
Elk Charm remained out on the trail somewhere, but if the Short Buffalo People
didn't get her, she'd still be around for his pleasure when this other business
had been brought to a successful conclusion.

 
          
 
He burst from the trees, heart leaping as he
found the camp peacefully intact.

 
          
 
"Red Hand!" he called out, waving
furiously. "Grab your weapons! The Short Buffalo People have come again!
This time, let us surprise them!"

 
          
 
Within minutes, he was leading his hunters
back down the trail. All that remained was to locate the tracks of the
intruders, hunt them down, and kill every last one.

 
          
 
The fire crackled and popped, sending flickers
of yellow light to play on the soot-thick ceiling of White Calf's shelter. The
air swelled with the scent of roasting buffalo hump and boiling tongue mixed
with dock, wild onion, cattail root, bee-plant leaves, and sego-lily root.

 
          
 
Little Dancer worked his sore shoulders,
feeling the pinch of overtaxed joints. Tomorrow, every muscle in his body would
be screaming. He looked over to where his father sat beside a rack of drying
meat. Satisfaction filled Hungry Bull's face, animation from the success of the
hunt momentarily replacing the sadness that normally filled his eyes. Two
Smokes propped himself against the back wall, agile fingers working supple
leather as he trimmed cured hide for moccasin soles to shape with a sharp
chert
flake. Elk Charm stood at the rear of the shelter,
studying the hanging bundles and medicine bags. The firelight played in her
shimmering hair. Little Dancer couldn't keep his eyes off the girl as she
moved, graceful, like a deer in fresh snow. White Calf sat by the fire, fussing
with the coals with a piece of firewood.

 
          
 
Little Dancer watched uneasily as White Calf
bent forward, staring into the buffalo-gut paunch that hung from the
juniper-wood tripod. "It could use another couple of stones. It's
steaming, but we want to keep a good boil in it."

 
          
 
Elk Charm hurried to help and used the hearth
sticks to grab another cobble from the glowing coals and drop it sizzling into
the stew. Bright black eyes flashed in his direction as she replaced the
sticks.

 
          
 
A curious feeling, a warm excitement, formed
deep inside Little Dancer—and it heightened as their eyes met. The air between
them might have been charged, so painfully could he feel her presence. What was
it about her? Why couldn't he get her out of his mind?

 
          
 
He dropped his gaze, amazed to find himself
awkwardly engrossed with his fumbling hands. Try as he might, he couldn't still
his fingers. Every nerve in his body demanded he do something. He stood up,
paced a couple of steps, and dropped to squat where he'd been in the beginning.
From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the girl's amused smile as she sought
to avoid his glance.

 
          
 
The Red Hand had passed through and camped
near White Calf's more than once over the years. On those instances, he'd
played with the children. He'd even met Elk Charm a time or two. One time, he'd
spent an afternoon with her and a couple of other children playing at stick and
hoop, laughing and running. So why hadn't he noticed the tones of her skin, the
way her hair gleamed in the light, or the mysterious depth in her dark eyes
before? Now her every movement absorbed him, almost to the point of being
painful. No matter how he tried to center his attention on other things, he
couldn't help sneaking a glance at her, wishing she'd smile at him, talk to
him.

 
          
 
For the moment, the girl had involved herself
with a careful study of the spiral pecked into the rear wall. White Calf had
daubed the lines with yellow from crushed balsam flowers.

 
          
 
Elk Charm reached up to touch it, her finger
lingering on the stone before she looked at White Calf. "There are a lot
of spirals like this pecked into the rocks on the north side of the mountains.
I remember them from when I was a girl. We'd camped there to meet with the
White Crane People. I think they were trading."

 
          
 
White Calf nodded. She'd been curiously
reserved for 01 her predatory gaze going first to the girl and then to him. He
hated it when her eyes got that
smok
veiled look.
Some worry preoccupied her, an uneasy premonition lurking in her mind. What had
he done to stir her cranky soul this time?

 
          
 
As if the morning breeze had shifted to blow a
clinging smoke away, Little Dancer realized it wasn't him, but Elk Charm. White
Calf didn't want Elk Charm around. He perked up. Why? What was it about her?

 
          
 
"You know about the Spiral?" White
Calf asked, shifting her glance to Elk Charm.

 
          
 
"Just that it's Powerful. It's old, isn't
it? Something from the time of the Monster Children and the Hero Twins?"

 
          
 
White Calf smiled wistfully, eyes going to the
rock art. "Yes, child, it's old. The Spiral is as old as First Man. In the
beginning, the Wise One Above made a world. Then he made animals and men. For a
long time things were good. Then, like always, something came along to mess it
up. It might have been the people. Maybe it was the animals, but somewhere, the
One of creation got separated. Split apart. Everything started going in
different directions. Humans came to believe they were the most important
beings in the
First
World
and they
ceased to thank the animals and plants for giving themselves as food. Animals
started to think they were the most important, and they left the people to
starve, refusing to offer themselves to be killed. Like a flawed
chert
nodule struck with a
hammerstone
,
it all shattered into different directions and nothing fit together
anymore."

 
          
 
Elk Charm's face lit, enraptured as she stared
at the spiral. Little Dancer watched her fingers trace the carving, a curious
sense of premonition spreading in his breast.

 
          
 
"Seeing all the trouble, Wise One Above
got disgusted with everything," White Calf continued, "and made a new
world for himself.
Tbrning
himself into Crafty
Spider, he spun the
Starweb
—the
Second World
. He figured that humans, in their physical
bodies, couldn't get there and mess it up. Except he was wrong. No sooner had he
finished the
Second
World
than all the
souls of people who'd died started to rise up and fill the
Starweb
.
They became the stars we see in the sky."

 
          
 
"But that didn't fix the trouble on the
First World
. It just crowded the
Starweb
,
right?" Elk Charm flashed a hopeful look at White Calf, hanging on each
word.

 
          
 
The girl's interest overrode White Calf's
suspicions and she launched into the story, animation in her old eyes.
"Yes, things were still bad in the
First World
—everything all split up and men and animals
all fussing and fighting. Wise One Above thought about it and he saw a way he
might be able to fix it. He created another world, the
Third World
, and filled it with spirits to help people
when they asked for it. Wise One Above made Dreams so that spirits could talk
from the
Third World
to people in the First. For a while things
were better, but the
First
World
still had
bad things in it."

 
          
 
“And is that where Dreamers come from?"
Elk Charm asked.

 
          
 
“You know this story," White Calf chided.
“Dreamers are the key to keeping things in balance. They make everything right
again, and Dance along the Spiral."

 
          
 
“You are losing your place, old woman,"
Two Smokes called from the side. “Get on with the story."

 
          
 
White Calf shot him a withering glare. “Yes,
well, about that time, the Hero Twins—First Man and his twin brother-were born
in the
First World
. Something happened and their mother died
and left the boys all alone. Wise One Above could feel the Power of a Dreamer,
but which child would it be? He couldn't just let them die, because a Dreamer
might be able to fix the First World and make it right again, so he called out
and told Wolf—who is always smart and cunning— to go find the babies. Wolf
found the little boys lying alongside a beach next to an ocean and raised them.
First Man liked the day and lived in the light. His brother liked the darkness
and hid and schemed.

 
          
 
“Meanwhile, Wise One Above decided that he'd
start over and make a new world, a Fourth World. When he made it, he thought it
was good. So he called to Wolf and told him to find all the good animals and
bring them through an underground hole to the new world. Wolf did this and led
all the animals into the Fourth World—this world we're in now—and saw how
wonderful it was."

 
          
 
"Then what about First Man?" Little
Dancer asked. "If Wolf only led animals, then First Man was still on the
other side

 
          
 
White Calf studied him for a moment, nodding.
"That's right. First Man and his brother were on the other side of the
hole between the worlds. But Wolf got lonely because he had to leave his two
human children behind. So what he did, he Dreamed the Wolf Dream to First Man
and gave him the Wolf Bundle to use as a guide to bring the good people from
the First World. First Man did this, leading the good people up from under the
earth. Some say the hole was through ice. Others say it was through a tunnel in
the sky, and sometimes it's told as being through rock, but no matter how, they
came into this world."

 
          
 
"But the bad brother followed?"

 
          
 
"Yes, First Man's brother followed him
and brought evil with him.