Native Gold (32 page)

Sakote broke through the cedars and looked up at the violet sky, where Wonomi had lit the first few star fires. He felt it again—that sensation of wrongness, the hunter’s instinct that something dangerous was nearby.

He shouldn’t be here, so close to the gold camp. His body still ached from the fists and boots of the white man and the injuries he’d concealed from the tribe.

He’d said it was finished,
akina
. That night he’d severed the bond between the Konkows and the whites. He’d shown the miners with his words and his actions that he would come no more. Yet here he stood, like a kicked wolf pup returning for more kicking, at the boundary of the
willa
’s world.

All because of Mati.

He’d tried to banish her from his thoughts. He knew he shouldn’t worry about her. The miners would take care of her, especially that big yellow-haired man. He saw in the man’s eyes that he would protect Mati with his life.

But Sakote hadn’t slept well in days. He’d lain awake beneath a moon as white as milkwood sap, remembering the way her eyes glowed like new grass and the sprinkle of freckles that crossed her cheek like stars, imagining the softness of her hair and the dizzying sensation of her blackberry-sweet lips pressed to his. He missed her laughter. He missed her scolding. He missed the fiery passion that darkened her gaze when she made her sketches.

And last night, when sleep finally came to him, he dreamed of Mati. She was the white eagle, flying above as always with her two eggs. But this time, her wing feathers fluttered and then bent, twisted by some unseen force. Wounded, she careened wildly through the sky. One of the eggs slipped from her grasp, and she screeched in despair as it broke upon the ground. And then she followed it, plummeting arrow-quick, her wings useless, her talons clawing the empty air, toward the earth, toward Sakote.

He awoke suddenly as if emerging from the
kum
, the lodge—his body beaded with sweat, his skin shivering. All day, he couldn’t purge the disturbing image from his mind. Finally, when he snapped at Hintsuli for asking him too many questions, his mother took him aside.

With her gentle voice and her calm manner, she prodded his troubles from him. And he told her everything. About his dream. About his encounter with the white men. And about Mati.

When he was finished, his mother sagely shook her head.

"My son’s path cannot be more clear," she said. "His heart knows the way." She grasped his hand solidly in her own. "He is meant to be with the white woman."

He would have answered her, but she held up her palm for silence.

"The world of the Konkow is changing," she told him. "My daughter lives in the valley with a settler. My youngest son plays with the toys of the white man. Perhaps this woman of my older son will bring peace between the whites and the Konkows."

Sakote wondered if there could ever be peace between their peoples.

"A man must follow the will of The Creator," she said. "He cannot ignore the messages of Wonomi, who speaks in dreams. If the white eagle is in danger, he must go to her."

Sakote nodded. In truth, his mother’s words relieved him. He felt like a hunter who’d traveled many miles to finally unload a heavy deer from his shoulders. He must go to Mati. His heart knew it. His mother knew it. And Wonomi told him so.

And so Sakote, his spirits light, had left just before the sun slept, stopping to pluck a bright bunch of poppies that he knew would give Mati pleasure.

But now, as the shadows of the evening began to paint the trees, he was troubled by that sense of danger. He slowed his pace. Something wasn’t right. The air was too still, and the forest animals were restless. He hadn’t yet come to Mati’s clearing when he recognized the smell of smoke.

It wasn’t the smoke of a cookfire. The scent was too strong, too heavy. It smelled like a brush fire or like the ritual fires of Weda, where baskets and clothing were burned in honor of the dead. But it wasn’t the season for lightning. And it wasn’t the time of Weda. The smoke seemed to come from the north, toward...

Mati’s cabin!

The flowers fell from his fingers.

He raced forward through the slapping branches, throwing care to the wind. Quail and chipmunks scattered from his path. His heart beat against his ribs, matching his headlong stride as he crashed through the manzanita. All the while, he prayed to Wonomi to keep Mati from harm. At last, he burst through the trees.

And froze.

His worst fears were confirmed. Before him, Mati’s cabin blazed with flame to rival the towering fires of Weda. Thick white smoke churned into the sky. The air shimmered with intense heat, like images in a spirit vision. Sakote’s gut tightened.

Mati. Mati might still be inside.

Unaware he was even speaking, he began to plead with Wonomi. “Please don’t let the white woman be in her
hubo
,” he murmured. “Please let her be safe.”

He lurched forward till he reached the cabin. A wave of searing air struck his face as snowy ashes settled in his hair.

He died a hundred deaths searching for her. Flames licked dangerously close to his flesh as he squinted through the fiery portal that was once her window. Smoke billowed around him as he frantically circled the blazing structure. He bellowed her name, but the sound was lost in the roar of the fire.

And then he spied hope. At the far reaches of the haze, past the jointed corner of blackening logs, flapped the hem of Mati’s brown dress. A booted foot appeared, then a pair of fine white hands, and finally Mati’s disheveled but unmistakable mane of tawny hair. She stumbled forward, and a knot of grateful tears strangled Sakote as he fought his way toward her.

She wasn’t alone. A man dragged her farther from the fire. The pair of them looked as if they’d met up with an angry bear. The man wheezed and stumbled through the smoke, clutching a bloody rag against his stomach. Mati’s skirt was torn, her hair had come loose from her braid, and her face was pale and streaked with blood. But she was alive.

The man had saved Mati’s life. He’d delivered her from harm. Sakote felt a twinge of shame that he hadn’t been there to rescue her, but his heart was too full of relief for regret. Closing his eyes briefly, he sent up a thankful prayer to Wonomi.

When he looked up again, he thought his eyes deceived him. He watched in horror as the man suddenly yanked a fistful of Mati’s hair and threw her to the ground. Shock took Sakote’s breath away. Disbelief paralyzed him.

Whatever the white man was, he wasn’t her rescuer. The brute kicked once, hard, at her still body. Pure fury raged through Sakote’s veins as he sprang forward. Before the man could rear his foot back to deliver a second blow, Sakote pounced on him like a yowling wildcat.

The man grunted beneath his attack. Sakote wrapped a vicious fist in the man’s hair and ripped a hank from his head, ignoring his scream of agony.

The man’s elbow jabbed backward, catching Sakote in the stomach. He doubled over, and the man’s boot stomped hard on the arch of his foot.

The pain scattered stars across Sakote’s eyes, but he shook them free like a wolf shaking off water. The man’s fist barreled toward his face, but Sakote caught it, twisting the monster’s arm savagely behind his back till it cracked.

And still the man fought. Spittle flew from his mouth. He cursed and wheeled on Sakote, one arm hanging useless at his side, the other swinging wildly. Then he swept his stiff boot beneath Sakote’s foot, knocking him backward onto the earth with a thud.

The man would have stepped on Sakote then, broken his ribs and squashed him like a beetle. But Sakote seized his raised foot and wrenched it sideways, throwing the man over.

And then the spirit of the vengeful grizzly came upon him. Relentlessly, he punched the brute, caving the man’s abdomen, crunching the bones of his nose and jaw. Sakote loosed his wrath like a bee-crazed bear until sweat dripped from his forehead and blood slicked his fists.

Only when the blinding red haze gradually dissolved did Sakote come back to himself. He looked down at his victim. Had that bloody mess been a man? Had
he
wrought such damage? He looked at his culpable hands, swollen and dripping with the man’s lifeblood. He hadn’t known he was capable of such violence.

And yet he would do it again.

The man had hurt Mati.

Mati! He staggered forward. She lay so quiet, so still.

"Mati." Her name rasped against his throat like frozen wind. He hunkered down beside her, cradling her limp head against his arm. "Oh Mati, don’t go from me." His chest tightened with pain. He brushed the hair back from her forehead and pressed his bloody fingers to her temple, feeling for a pulse. Thank Wonomi, her heart was still beating. But she didn’t waken.

He began to pray aloud, closing his eyes, lifting his head to the sky, rocking back and forth with the rhythm of his words. He placed his palms upon her, summoning The Great Spirit’s restorative power, even though it was his mother who was the healer of the tribe. He asked forgiveness for the man he’d killed and promised that he would take care of the white eagle.

Mati coughed then, and tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. She licked her swollen lips to speak.

"Sakote.” She tried to smile at him, but it seemed too painful. Then her gaze drifted over to the burning cabin. “My...my sketches," she murmured forlornly, pulling some tattered piece of paper from her pocket. "He burned them—all my beautiful sketches."

The page was wrinkled, but he recognized the man in the picture. It was him. She’d saved it from the fire. He swallowed down the lump in his throat and tucked the paper back into her pocket.

Sakote didn’t know why, but more than her injuries, her despair wounded his heart. Partly because he felt to blame. If only he’d stayed with her, watched over her...

He cast a quick glance toward the miner’s village, and anger flared in him like the first spark of fire. The miners—why hadn’t they protected Mati from this
hudesi
? Where was the big man with the yellow hair?

Before caution could stop him, he gathered Mati tenderly in his arms, wincing as she moaned in pain. Carrying her, he made his way brazenly to the settlement of the gold camp, determined to confront the
willa
with what they’d done to Mati.

What he found stole the breath from him in a loud hiss. The camp looked like the grisly aftermath of a Yana battle, a bloody massacre. Before him, the bodies of the miners—the man with the round hat, the young boy from Mati’s porch, the yellow-haired giant—lay bleeding and broken, scattered like dead leaves. The stranger that had hurt Mati must have slaughtered them before continuing on to her cabin. Sakote tried to turn away from the ghastly sight so Mati wouldn’t see, but she clutched at his arm, peering over his shoulder.

Her heartsick sob caught at his heart, and suddenly he wasn’t sorry at all that he’d killed the
hudesi.

His voice sounded like empty wind against the terrible silence of death. "There’s a healer in my village. I’ll take you there."

But Mati had already drifted off.

Mattie had no idea where she was or how long she’d been asleep. It would help if she could open her eyes, but right now it was too much of an effort. Nothing seemed familiar. The textures, the smells, the sounds, even the sensations within her own body were foreign, strange, almost as if she’d been born into another being, into another life.

Perhaps she had.

The last things she recalled were the stench of smoke, the agony of watching her sketches burn, and that horrible man driving his fist toward her face.

No, that wasn’t all. She recollected snatches of other things, too—the miners lying dead in Paradise Bar, patches of moonlight as she was carried through the woods, murmurs in another language, strange pungent aromas, and Sakote...

Sakote. He had come for her. She remembered that much.

But where was he now?

Only one eye would open properly. The other seemed to be pasted shut. She peered about her as best she could.

She lay in a dwelling of some sort, like a cave or the inside of a tree. Sunlight sneaked in through gaps of limbs here and there and poured like a stream through the one low opening at her feet. But it hurt to look at the bright beam, so she turned her head aside.

Sakote must have brought her here. It smelled like him. Crisp cedar and sweet reeds, wood smoke and tanned leather scented the air, along with several odors she didn’t recognize—oily, herbal, bitter substances.

Her tongue ventured as slowly as a snail from its shell to wet her swollen, cracked lips, and she squinted toward the perimeter of the hut in search of something, anything, to drink.

Mounds of pine needles covered the floor, and a collection of baskets woven with angular designs squatted in the corner. Assorted animal skins and red-feathered bands, strings of white beads and strips of leather hung from branches along one side of the curved wall, and crouching at the foot of the wall was what appeared to be a giant stone mortar and pestle.

But it was what lay propped against the mortar that made her heart race and brought mist to her eyes. It was her drawing of Sakote, wrinkled and soot-stained, but intact.