In the Season of the Sun (33 page)

Tewa's eyes were moist when she looked up from her labor and met Sparrow Woman's open, honest gaze.

“When does the journey end?” she asked, sounding more like a frightened girl than one called Warrior Woman.

Sparrow Woman replied matter of factly, “You will know.”

Jacob and the Shoshoni saw each other almost simultaneously. Walks With The Bear reined in his bald-faced gelding and the pack horse trailing behind him. The Shoshoni held his right hand palm outward in a gesture of friendship. Even from fifty yards the Shoshoni recognized that a white man in the trappings of a Blackfoot blocked his way to the valley. He was surprised but held his ground.

The Shoshoni and Blackfeet had rendezvoused together down on the Yellowstone in years past. Neither tribe had encroached on the other's hunting grounds, which helped to keep peace between them. Still, a man couldn't be too sure, and Jacob had foolishly left his rifle back in the village. The bowie knife sheathed at his waist was his only weapon. The Shoshoni carried a Hawken rifle in the crook of his arm. However, Jacob didn't have to feel lonely for long. Otter Tail announced his arrival with a loud cry that reverberated off the walls of the pass.

Otter Tail had been guarding the entrance to the valley and from his vantage point on a low hill to the south had watched the Shoshoni draw close to the valley. Otter Tail had remained hidden on the slope until he was certain the brave came alone. Jacob was grateful for his friend's arrival. Otter Tail galloped up alongside Jacob and playfully remonstrated the yellow-haired brave.

“Are you so sick at heart that you would let some enemy lift your hair?”

“This Shoshoni does not appear to be an enemy,” Jacob said, trying to save face. But the portly brave wouldn't buy it.

“Saa-vaa
, and if this Shoshoni were a Crow or Kootenai?”

“Then I would depend on my brave brother Otter Tail to save me.” Jacob clapped his friend on the shoulder, and the two men rode side by side toward the visitor.

Bear turned in the saddle and with a sweep of his hand indicated the pack horse trailing behind him. “I bring gifts to the people of Medicine Lake. I come in the peace that lay between our fathers and their fathers. I go in peace as well.”

Bear wore the beaded buckskin shirt and leggings of his own tribe, but a wide-brimmed black hat shaded his features. He'd tucked an eagle father in the brim. Despite the years since the massacre of his parents, Jacob still had to suppress the anger that rose to choke him whenever he rode among the Shoshoni. One of these braves might have ridden with those killers, befriended Coyote Kilhenny and the half-breed's treacherous cohorts. Bear sensed the thinly veiled resentment radiating from Jacob and avoided eye contact with the younger man.

“I must speak with your elders, the chiefs of your village.” Bear tugged a shiny new knife from his belt and handed it to Otter Tail. “Plenty guns like this one,” Bear continued and displayed the Hawken he carried. “I bring important news from the River of Two Bears.” He turned and offered his knife to Jacob for inspection. Jacob made no move to accept the weapon. He continued to glower at the lone brave, and wanted nothing to do with him. In truth, he felt he knew the man but could not guess why. So he dismissed his suspicions as a natural disregard for all Shoshoni.

“It is a good rifle,” Otter Tail admitted and with customary greediness turned back to the pack horse to see what other gifts Bear had brought with him. The Shoshoni wheeled his horse about and intercepted the Blackfoot brave.

“There will be more when I sit in council with Standing Elk and Lone Walker and the other elders,” Bear said, a note of finality in his voice.

Otter Tail scowled and circled the pack horse and drew abreast of Jacob.

“Where are the others of your village?” Otter Tail asked, glancing down the back trail at the lone warrior's tracks switching back and forth through the low hills. It seemed obvious the Shoshoni had ridden in from the prairie beyond the distant divide to the east.

“I do not come from my people,” Bear said, sitting relaxed in the saddle, a figure of false composure. He lifted his right hand and pointed directly at Jacob. “I come from his.”

37

B
ear spoke well and his words fell on receptive ears especially after he'd distributed a half-dozen new Hawken rifles among the tribal elders. The white men had come in peace to their fort to the east. They did not intend to encroach on the land of the Blackfeet. They wished only trade with the people of Ever Shadow, offering rifles and pistols, blankets, knives, and iron arrowheads in exchange for pelts and buffalo hides.

If the white man didn't trade with the Blackfeet, they would merely locate further south and trade with the Crow villages down on the Tongue. Better that the Blackfeet put aside their natural enmity toward the white man than see the Crow, the enemies of Ever Shadow, heavily armed and able to encroach the high country.

“White traders five suns from Medicine Lake,” Lone Walker mused aloud. “And none of our hunters have returned to tell us of such a thing.”

The Shoshoni shrugged and hooked his thumbs in his belt. “The plains reach as far as a man can see. In such a place, two men may ride and never meet.” Bear's expression never wavered as he lied. Nothing in his implacable gaze revealed how eleven days earlier he had helped to ambush a Blackfoot hunting party. Coyote Kilhenny, Skintop Pritchard, a dozen hardcase trappers, and the Shoshoni had followed the sound of gunfire to a buffalo kill. Four Blackfoot braves had been surprised and shot dead as they butchered a buffalo bull. Kilhenny had promptly loaded the meat onto a captured travois.

So Bear, the Shoshoni, spoke of peace and gave his gifts and in the end convinced the tribal chiefs to come with him to Fort Promise. Even Lone Walker saw no harm in at least seeing with his own eyes these white men who had come to establish trade.

The medicine pipe was brought forth once more to the elders circled near the council fire in the center of the village. Feathery wisps of white dotted the azure sky crossed from time to time by formations of geese winging north to summer's nesting lands. The pipe bowl was carved from stone brought from sacred ground to the east and fitted with a stem of willow wood. A mixture of cherry bark, wild sage, bitterroot, and elk mint had been tamped down into the bowl and lit with a coal from the sacred fire.

Lone Walker stood among his peers and proclaimed the elders' decision aloud to the men and women of the village who had gathered at a respectful distance, Jacob Sun Gift among them. Even the children had come to stand with their parents, their normally playful attitudes subdued by the lighting of the council fire and the gathering of the chiefs.

“White men have come to Ever Shadow. Walks With The Bear, our brother, speaks for them. He tells us they come in peace. They send us gifts and offer much for our hides and pelts.” Lone Walker's voice rang out over the village.

Jacob shifted his stance, sensing Sparrow Woman at his side. She smiled at her son. Jacob touched her arm, then he raised his eyes and spied Tewa at the rear of the crowd, her features hidden beneath her wolf's-head cowl, her father's war lance carried in her strong right hand. It was only with great effort Jacob returned his attention to the council.

“I will go and see with my own eyes,” Lone Walker continued. “What others who sit at this fire will go with me?”

Standing Elk, a much-respected chief of the Bowstring Clan, rose to take his place alongside Lone Walker. Then Tall Bull, tens years older than the rest but straight and proud in stature, climbed to his feet and beside him, Hawk Moon of the Sinapah, the Kit Fox clan, declared himself. These four among all the elders were the heart of the council and, indeed, the entire tribe looked to them for wisdom and judgment.

Lone Walker held the medicine pipe aloft, pointing the stem first to the east, the dwelling place of youth, next to the south, symbol of early manhood when youth and vigor burn in the veins like green fire. Next, he pointed westward; there lay the wisdom of a life well lived, with honor and reverence, and lastly, he faced the north, the happy place of death where all who have gone before waited with the All-Father.

Lone Walker turned once again to the east, beginning the cycle anew, completing the great circle of life that has no beginning or end but is one with the mystery and the Father of all.

Smoke curled from the pipe bowl as Lone Walker faced the Shoshoni. “Smoke the medicine pipe that the path of all you have spoken here lies true and straight.”

Bear stared at the pipe, knowing in his own mind that to lie at such a time could result in the gravest of consequences. But he'd drunk too much of Kilhenny's liquor and too often tested the power of the white man's yellow metal to be dissuaded now. Kilhenny had promised him wealth and power and the choicest of Blackfoot squaws to warm his lodge. He took the pipe and smoked and passed it to the brave next to him, blind Two Stars, who would have stood and traveled with the younger men but for his lack of sight.

Lone Walker seemed to sense this and knelt by the blind man.

“Old one, your eyes are dark, but your ears are keen. Will you ride with us and listen to what these white men have to say and tell us what is in their hearts?”

Two Stars sat upright; the years sloughed away and he nodded with surprising vigor. The death of Wolf Lance had been a heavy burden for him. Lone Walker's suggestion pumped new life into him.

“I will go.”

Two Stars smoked the pipe and handed it to Lone Walker, who put it to his lips. He studied the Shoshoni through the tendrils of sacred smoke. The Blackfoot had his misgivings but could see no other way out of the situation. The white traders must be reckoned with one way or the other.

Lone Walker looked around at the faces circling the council and found the one he sought. The day Lone Walker dreaded had at long last come. Jacob must ride with them, back among his own kind and not just some liquor-crazed, half-wild trappers at the rendezvous but people like Jacob, traders, men connected to the white man's world that lay beyond the plains to the east.

Perhaps Jacob might want to return to his own kind, to go back to the world of his true father and live no more in the song of Ever Shadow. All things were possible and Lone Walker's mind was filled with turmoil at what the future held, blinding his instincts to the treachery at hand. He looked at Bear and said, “It is done.”

Jacob stood in the shadow of the wedding lodge on the hill above the village when Tewa rode up and reined in her own mount. She stared in wide-eyed amazement at Jacob, whose presence had completely violated tradition and custom. As for Tewa, she didn't know whether to embrace him or to kill him.

Sunlight and gentle breezes lay softly on the land. Hawks in lazy spirals scoured the landscape in search of prey. And in the distance a bawling bear cub searched a rotting tree trunk for grubs.

Tewa had just ridden up from the village after a brief visit with her grandfather. She had insisted on accompanying Two Stars to Fort Promise despite his protests. She lowered her war lance and pointed the blade at Jacob.

“Why are you here?”

“It once was my right to be here. And not so long ago.” Jacob led his mare through the campsite. He moved past her guard and stepped in close to Tewa.

“I wanted to say good-bye,” Jacob said. “I ride with Lone Walker to where the white traders wait. Maybe I shall not return but stay among my own people.”

If his words affected her, Tewa did not show it at first. “I, too, am going.”

“I hear the sadness in your voice,” Jacob said. Her eyes were suddenly filled with sorrow. He hoped it was because she feared losing him.

“My heart is heavy. Because I have not yet learned to hate you.”

Jacob's own expression hardened. It had been foolish of him to try to reason with her. So be it. Tewa was lost to him and there was nothing he could say or do. He swung up onto the mare and fixed her in his bronze-eyed stare. “Perhaps you will learn by the time our journey is done.” He wheeled his horse past Tewa's mount and rode at a gallop down the slope, leaving the dust to settle in the wake of dashed dreams.

38

A
n hour before supper, Coyote Kilhenny came looking for Nate Harveson. He found him in the study, alone, and awaiting the trapper's arrival. Kilhenny's stomach was growling when he entered the front room and he hoped Harveson didn't have much on his mind. The half-breed's vision quickly adjusted to the lamplight.

“Good,” Harveson said as Kilhenny leaned over him. Harveson was seated at his desk, a journal open before him, a page partly filled with his handwriting. He noticed Kilhenny glance at the journal. “An account of everyday occurrences. I have been forced to begin anew what with the misplacement of a previous record.”

“Too bad,” Kilhenny said.

“But I didn't ask you here to discuss a missing book.”

Kilhenny leaned forward and braced himself on the desk with his brawny forearms. Yet for all his overbearing size, Nate Harveson did not quail before Kilhenny. Harveson merely eased back in his chair and crossed his arms upon his chest.

“Better men than you have tried to intimidate me, sir,” Harveson said. “Sit down and quit being so predictable.”

Kilhenny laughed, straightened, and backed from the desk. He hooked his thumbs in his belt.

“Speak your piece,
Mr
. Harveson.”

“All the cards on the table then,” Harveson began. “I know you've turned most the men against me, filled their heads with thoughts of greater wealth than what I'd offer. Of course, I intend to pay off my obligations.”

“Greed beats reason any day of the week.” Kilhenny no longer felt any need to hide his intentions.

“You won't succeed. This fort and everything in it belongs to me.”

“Really? I can muster a small army to debate the issue with Hawken rifles not fancy words.”