Gray Hawk's Lady: Blackfoot Warriors, Book 1 (27 page)

Gray Hawk heaved out a deep breath. “She is my sits-beside-him-wife, my mother. Do I look to be her slave?”

“One never knows, my son. You must be careful.”

“She treated me well when she captured me.”

His mother gave him a questioning glance.

“She gave to me my own slave, who did everything for me, who made new clothing for me, who bathed me, who even prepared and cooked my food.”

“Did you mate, then, with this slave, and that is why the white woman—”

“The slave was a man, my mother, and I am not a woman in man’s clothing.”

His mother’s eyes opened a fraction of an inch more. She had just scooped the bowl out of the soup; she promptly dropped it again.

“Do you speak the truth, my son? Does the white woman truly keep men as slaves?”

“That is what it appeared to be, my mother, but the white woman says the man is not her slave. She says the man is a friend of her father’s who had only accompanied her on her journey into our country.”

“A woman traveling with a man who is neither her father nor her husband? And you tell me that she…and that her father somehow allowed this?”

“It is hard to understand, my mother. As I said, the whites have many ways that are strange to us. She said the man was not a slave, yet he worked in the capacity of a slave. She said he wished it to be this way.”

His mother hesitated, her gaze fixed on her son. At last she said, “The white woman must be a woman of great medicine if she can make a slave of grown men who willingly do her bidding. This man who cared for you was not a boy?”

“No, my mother.” Gray Hawk sighed. “He was not a boy. But I think you do not understand it all. The man—”

“Perhaps I was wrong to have judged this woman so harshly if she has truly done these things, if she has counted such a great coup. It is only that she looks so puny.
But enough of that. I will have your sisters prepare a lodge at once—”

“My mother, you misunderstand.”

“Maybe you have made a wise choice in a wife after all, my son.”

“My mother, I…” Gray Hawk lifted his shoulders, completely baffled as to how to bring his mother to a correct understanding in regard to his wife, the whites, their ways.

Although perhaps he should let it go. Gaining his mother’s approval of his marriage was, after all, what he had intended when he had entered his mother’s
niitoyis
,
her lodge. He certainly had obtained that now, although…

Someone screamed from outside—Genevieve—and Gray Hawk, who had jumped to his feet in an instant, was already at the tepee’s entrance when the flap suddenly opened and Genevieve fell inside.

“Please, Gray Hawk,” she pleaded, her eyes, her face, her whole body, even its scent, ripe with raw fear. “Please, someone is trying to scalp me. Someone reached up and grabbed my hair, and—”

Gray Hawk held up a hand. He opened up the flap; he scanned the outside. He closed the flap, glancing after her, back toward her. He said, “Look behind you, Gen-ee.”

“No, I can’t, Gray Hawk, I—”

“Look behind you.”

“I—”

His gesture toward her this time was stern enough that Genevieve raised her head, darting a quick glance behind her.

A naked toddler sat at her feet.

Immediately, she turned her gaze to Gray Hawk, to his mother, and then back to him. She said, “I…”

He motioned back toward the child.

“Truly, Gray Hawk,” she began, “I was certain that someone… I thought that—”

Again he held up his hand. Looking at his mother, who stared openly at the woman, Gray Hawk lifted his gaze upward.

“Come,” he said, stepping toward Genevieve. “You must leave here at once. It is unseemly that you have spoken to your mother-in-law.”

“But I—”

“Enough!”

He opened the entrance flap and stepped out of the tepee, ensuring that the white woman followed him.

As he had expected, there was a crowd around his mother’s lodge. All the people had seen her, had witnessed her fear.

“
Haiya
,”
he muttered to himself. He had better start praying harder, because he was definitely going to need the above ones’ help if he ever intended to tame this woman.

“Really, Gray Hawk, how was I supposed to know it was a child who had pulled on my hair?”

“You were told to await me while I finished talking with my mother.”

“But, Gray Hawk, so many people were pushing in on me—trying to touch me, my dress, my hair. I thought someone had reached up toward me to scalp me.”

“I told you that you would be safe here.”

“But I—”

“Enough! There are other things I need to tell you.”

“Oh,” she said and glanced around her. They were seated in what Gray Hawk had said was his sister’s lodge. There was a delicious-smelling soup stewing over the fire as well as several slabs of meat hanging on sticks over it, and all about the tepee were the scents of sage and sweet grass, which, combined with the aroma of the food, made for a foreign, if intoxicating, fragrance.

Genevieve had just finished two bowls of the soup; Gray Hawk’s sister had served the meal before leaving the lodge to the use of her brother and his new sits-beside-him-wife.

There were all sorts of items here that Genevieve would have liked to examine in more detail, but she was afraid to ask the permission to do so.

She did note that all the tepees here were painted, this one’s design clearly seen from within. And there was a sort of lining, perhaps five feet high, that stretched all around the tepee. It was sewn into patterns and designs with different colors of rawhide and paint.

This lining’s design was a crisscross pattern of reds and blues all laid in strips and underlain with rawhide. The whole effect was bright, original and homey, and it made Genevieve feel more relaxed.

Robes and trading blankets were scattered all around the interior, too, and in the center of the tepee, a ring of stones had been placed around the fire, the blaze appearing to be always burning. Several backrests leaned against the tepee lining, and Gray Hawk sat back upon one right now.

Her gaze fell to him, only to find him staring at her. Unnerved, she looked away.

He said, “My sisters will put up a lodge of your own for you as soon as they can sew it together.”

“That is very kind of them. However, Gray Hawk, I need to return to my father. I cannot stay here long.”

He held up a hand. “I know. Later we will talk of it.”

“But Gray Hawk, we never seem to have this conversation, and it is so very important, and I—”

“Silence, woman.”

“Gray Hawk, I—”

“We will talk about it, I promise you, but I—”

“When?”

“You
dare to interrupt me?”

“You interrupted me.”

“But you are a woman.”

“Yes? So? What has that got to do with it?”

He sighed. “It is a woman’s job to listen to her husband and to quietly—and I mean quietly—advise him. Do I need to teach you this, too?”

She bristled. “It is a man’s job, just as importantly, to listen to his woman. And no, you don’t. Do I?”

He gave her another stem look.

“Gray Hawk, I’m sorry to argue with you, but this is very important and I—”

“Silence, wife. I know how much you need to see your father, and I said that we will speak of it later.”

She sighed. She didn’t want to, anger him, yet… “When, Gray Hawk, when will we talk about it?”

He, too, breathed out deeply. “We will speak of this problem as soon as I have seen to the welfare and safety of my mother and my sisters.”

“All right,” she said. “And how long will that take you?”

“It will take me as long as it will take me. And each moment we spend arguing keeps me from performing this duty.”

She frowned and peered over toward him. Something in his tone, not his words, made her curious. “Do you worry?” she asked.

He grunted.

Interesting. She watched him carefully as she asked, “What is it? What has you so worried? Is it your family? They seem fine to me, but then I don’t understand all that happens here in your camp. Is it me? Have I done something to offend them—you?”

“
Saa
, no, you have done nothing.” He hesitated. “I worry because I do not want to be absent from the big buffalo hunt in the moon when we prepare food.”

“Why?”

“Because it is from this hunt,” he said, “that my people obtain most of the food that will see them through the winter. If I am not here, I will worry about my family.”

“But why wouldn’t you be here, unless… Does this mean that you are thinking of taking me back to—?”

“Quiet, woman. I am thinking.”

She bridled. “I was only trying to—”

“It is a very sorry diet when all one has to eat is dried meat and berries.”

“Yes, that would soon grow to be unbearable, but what does that have to do with—”

“I am all that my family has.”

“What do you mean? Have I missed something?”

“There is no one else to see to them.”

“I am afraid I still don’t understand.”

He frowned. “I believe I once told you about my father’s death.”

“Yes, I am so very sorry.”

“I also have no brothers, and my sisters are all still unmarried.”

“Yes? But—”

He held up a hand. “In our society, the burden of the family’s survival sits with the men. While it is true, as you have pointed out, that men cannot survive well without women, so too, women depend upon their men. Is it not up to the man to venture out each day in search of food? Is it not for the men of the tribe to see to the winter stores, their duty to see that all their families have enough food, enough furs and hides to see them through any harsh times…the winter?”

She sat still for a moment, unable to move. A thought had just occurred to her, and she wasn’t too certain what it all meant. At length, however, she said, “So are you trying to tell me that without you, your family could die this winter?”

“I would not like to say it could go that far, but it could happen. They could starve, or they could be very uncomfortable. I would not like to see either happen.”

“I see,” she said, and it was odd because she really did…see, that is.

“And when I captured you, it was this that caused you so much worry?”

“Mostly.”

She stared off ahead of her.

Had she been blind? Why had she not realized until this moment just how worried this man was about his family? Why hadn’t she seen that he was as concerned about his responsibilities to his family as she was about her own?

While it was true that she had known he had a problem here in his village, she had never before been concerned about how he felt. Not really. She had mouthed the words, but…

Why hadn’t she?

Had she still, despite all she had learned about him, all that she felt for him, seen him only as a foreigner? An Indian without any feelings or emotions?

Had she?

She grimaced, facing perhaps for the first time an unsavory truth about herself: she simply hadn’t cared.

It was not a pleasant thing to realize about oneself.

She lifted her head. Well, she cared now.

She was seeing this man as if she looked at him for the first time. He loved his family. He worried about them. He was trying to do the best he could for them.

The least she could do was lend a hand while she was here, if she was able.

And so it was, for the first time in her life, that Genevieve Rohan felt compelled to ask, truly interested, “What must you do in order to support your family?”

Again he hesitated, giving Genevieve an odd look, but at last he said, “I must see that the women have many food stores, and if they do not, I must hunt many buffalo so that they do.”

“And how could I help?”

He looked at her curiously and said, “You could assist me in finding just how much food my mother and sisters have stored. You could also help my sisters with the drying of the meat I bring in; perhaps too with fixing the food and with tanning the hides. That would allow me more time to hunt and to find someone who will provide for them throughout the winter.”

“I see,” she said. “You know, of course, that I am not very skilled in doing any of these things.”

“Anything you could do would assist them. Also, you could prepare my things, and yours, too, in case we need to move. There are certain ways of making moccasins and leggings and robes for the cold winters. My sisters will gladly teach you this so that you can prepare.”

“All right,” she said. “I didn’t know that the making of clothing was different.”

He nodded. “It is the same in the white man’s culture. You wear heavier clothes in the winter. So too do the Pikuni. We long ago observed that the best furs for warmth are those that we catch at the beginning of winter. Then the animals have a thick hide and heavy fur. These are the skins and furs we use for warm robes, for winter moccasins, for bedding robes. My sisters will show you.”