People of the Earth (12 page)

 
          
 
Wind Runner grinned to himself. The hunt had
been perfect. He squinted against the blustery weather, looking back over his
shoulder to where the other men toiled, half hidden by the tortured ground
blizzard, hip-deep in the blood-soaked drift. Meat: a godsend—despite the
blasting wind that sucked a man's heat away with the whimpering wraiths of
snow. Four life-saving buffalo.

 
          
 
As long as a man worked the warm carcasses, he
could keep the feeling in his fingers. But let him stand up and carry a sagging
piece of meat to the place where they left it to freeze in the snow, and
needles of ice lanced his fingers to numb the joints. Blood and melted snow
soaked into moccasins, freezing as the wind glazed ice on the worn hide. Nasty
work, this—and so wonderful at the same time.

 
          
 
Brave Man walked up onto the firmer footing of
the ridge top and crouched down, taking an antler baton to strike flakes from
the blunted edge pf a quartzite
biface
he used as a
butchering tool. The baton made a dull, smacking sound against the background
moan of the wind. The thin flakes of stone tinkled musically at the warrior's
feet.

 
          
 
Wind Runner's gut tensed. What was it about
Brave Man that set him on edge so? Every time they were together these days, he
had the feeling that a hair separated them from violence. Brave Man's attitude
had become diffident, carrying an underlying threat he concealed poorly.

 
          
 
He’s waiting. A shiver unrelated to the icy
wind slipped down Wind Runner's backbone. If those voices in his head ever tell
him to, he’ll kill me.

 
          
 
Images of the past returned: the times they'd
chased each other, played dart and hoop, captured snakes and birds, and
wrestled in the grass. Now their friendship had been
riven
-split
like weathered wood by a stone maul. How could two best friends go in such
opposite directions? Brave Man could have had White Ash for a wife. Despite the
longing in Wind Runner's heart, he'd accepted her love for Brave Man. To
entertain any other idea was to flirt with incest. And she had loved the old
Brave Man with all her heart. But this new Brave Man? This stranger? He'd
killed her love as brutally as he killed the enemies of the White Clay.

 
          
 
Wind Runner shook his head, baffled. Power did
funny things to people—especially to those who could claim to have been to the
Camp of the Dead. Except, in Brave Man's case, Wind Runner couldn't be sure
something hadn't tainted the Power—turned it evil.

 
          
 
"You trying to own that fire?" Sage
Ghost asked as he huddled down next to Wind Runner, extending blood-encrusted
fingers to the tiny blaze.

 
          
 
"Pretty cold."

 
          
 
"Yeah." Sage Ghost sniffed at his
running nose. "Listen, someone needs to return to camp and tell them. It's
better to move camp over here than to carry all this back."

 
          
 
Wind Runner squinted around, looking at the
snow-caked country. Triangular-shaped drifts stippled the surface, tapering out
behind the sagebrush. "Where do you think? I don't see much shelter out
here."

 
          
 
Sage Ghost shivered, rocking back and forth to
keep his feet warm. "I'll have Bobcat and Brave Man look around, see if
they can find someplace close. Unless, that is, you want to throw a couple of
these buffalo over your shoulder and run home with them?"

           
 
Wind Runner grinned, exposing his straight
white teeth. "Sure, uncle. I'll take two . . . if you take the rest."

 
          
 
Sage Ghost shared the joke, a smile crinkling
his face. "I want you to go back to camp for another reason. I feel
something. I don't know what, just an unease. It's something to do with camp.
Go and see for me? Take care of Bright Moon and White Ash. Make sure they're
all right."

 
          
 
Wind Runner shot him a curious look. "You
talked to Old Falcon about this? Maybe it's a Spirit Dream."

 
          
 
Sage Ghost pursed his lips, gaze intent on the
fire. "No. It's just a feeling." He paused. "Go and bring the
camp. We'll have a place picked out for it."

 
          
 
"Be a long day to make it back to camp.
Then maybe two days to get everyone here. The old ones and the little children
don't walk fast. We don't want to camp out in that wide-open flat, either. The
wind would blow us right to the top of the Wolf People's mountains."

 
          
 
Sage Ghost's face went taut. His eyes darted
over the snowy hills as if searching for hidden enemy warriors slithering
through the sage. "Don't even think it."

 
          
 
"I wish we had someplace else to
go."

 
          
 
"Maybe south . . . maybe down there
beyond those mountains." Sage Ghost shielded his face against the wind and
stared at the irregular peaks that rose against the southern horizon. "I
was there once. Power took me there. I stole White Ash from the People of the
Earth. Maybe we can find a place where the People of the Earth will leave us
alone." Sage Ghost shook his head. "White Ash was young then, but she
said that the People of the Earth always had enough to eat. Unlike us, they know
the plants. When animals are scarce, they eat seeds, roots, dried leaves. The
Traders say the same thing, that the Earth People always have food."

 
          
 
"You thinking about eating plants?"

 
          
 
Sage Ghost laughed nervously. "There's
something to be said for it if you know you'll have a full belly."

 
          
 
"Elk and buffalo eat plants. I don't
notice thick pads of fat on their backs these days."

 
          
 
"The Earth People pick the plants in the
summer and fall. They collect seeds and dry them over a fire. Some they char on
the outside so they don't get moldy. Then, what they collect, they store for
the winter—and hunt at the same time. Elk and buffalo don't store plants. They
just let the snow cover up all their graze."

 
          
 
'They don't hunt, either."

 
          
 
"That's why men have the best of
everything. We can eat plants and hunt, too."

 
          
 
"You really want to eat plants?"

 
          
 
"I notice we Trade a lot of dried buffalo
meat for those pine-nut cakes the Traders bring north."

 
          
 
Wind Runner snorted. "You've given me
something to think on while I go to get the camp. Four buffalo won't last long
with all those hungry mouths. Maybe I can kill something on the way. Stretch
the food a little."

 
          
 
"You do that. And take good care of your
aunt. I'm worried about her."

 
          
 
"I will. I get a nervous feeling myself
when you have these spells. As I recall, you had a premonition about that camp
up on the Fat Beaver—just before the Black Point came and drove us out."
Wind Runner stood, using a thumbnail to peel dried blood out of his cuticles. "I'll
take a little of that meat. Don't know who might need it."

 
          
 
"I'll help you put together a pack."

 
          
 
As Wind Runner set out for the camp, he looked
back at the last of the coals from his fire, they were blowing away to die in
the snow. Power had always been close to Sage Ghost. What did this feeling
mean? Wind Runner paused, studying the scattered remnants of ash . . . and
shivered.

 
          
 
Brave Man cut across the ridge, staring
thoughtfully at Wind Runner's figure as it slowly disappeared beyond the crest
of the hill. A single dark dot against the snow, it bobbed as it made its way
north. Something soured in Brave Man's belly.

 
          
 
So, my old friend, you go to bring the People.
And with them, you will bring White Ash. He chuckled and looked up at the gray
sky, where the storm etched patterns in the clouds. Occasional specks of snow
drifted down—small, delicate flakes that shot past him in the ever-present
gusts of wind.

           
 
He'd Dreamed during the night, reliving the
hunt as he lay wrapped in his robe. The wind had been bad, moaning in the
darkness before slowing between gusts to whisper in the sage. In that
half-state, almost Dream, almost thought, he'd heard the voice of the wind. It
had whispered to him, talking in the manner of Spirit Power. He'd felt the lure
of the gray mist, understood its promise and its nature. Something wonderful,
Powerful, lay behind the obscuring haze. From it, he'd heard voices lifted in
Song. He'd felt the tendrils of Power caressing his soul. If only he could find
the way to the center of that mystical wonder. The voices had told him that
something important would happen soon. Once again the voices had promised him
White Ash—and the Power that would be hers.

 
          
 
I will have to kill you someday, Wind Runner.
I can feel it through the Power—feel the way it will be as your blood spurts
onto my hand, red and warm.

 
          
 
Brave Man closed his eyes against a stab of
blinding pain. The headache had begun to throb again, splintering his thoughts.
He could remember lying in the grass as he and Wind Runner told jokes and
laughed. What had happened to that friendship? Where had it all gone? Power had
come to him, but at what cost?

 
          
 
Before he escaped from the Camp of the Dead,
he'd never heard the voices. During that ominous summer—two years ago; was it really
that long?—the White Clay had camped on the banks of the Fat Beaver River to
the north. There the
narrowleaf
cottonwoods grew
thick in the green bottoms. Lush grasses brought herds of bison to enjoy the
bounty. Hunting had been good. He and Wind Runner had been close then, sharing
one heart as they discussed the prospects of manhood. White Ash had blossomed
into a young woman, giving Brave Man intimate looks of promise.

 
          
 
Everything changed when the Black Point
destroyed the camp in a surprise attack. The Black Point had been in desperate
need of new hunting ranges—and the White Clay held the Fat Beaver valley. On
that morning, Black Point warriors had exploded out of the cottonwoods, howling
their war cries, racing between the lodges as the shocked camp came awake.

 
          
 
The day before, Brave Man and Wind Runner had
played among those very trees, casting their darts at targets, talking about
how they would be tattooed as men before the next winter passed. They'd talked
of hunting, and of war, dreaming together and laughing as they lay in the thick
grass and batted at mosquitoes.

           
 
We dreamed then. Before you turned against me,
old friend. Brave Man spit into the snow.

 
          
 
At the shouts of warning, he'd come awake in
his father's lodge. Like everyone else, he'd ripped his robes aside, grabbed up
his
atlatl
and darts, and charged out of the lodge,
naked and frightened. Outside, confusion reigned. Warriors shouted and whooped
as they charged through the camp. Women screamed and children cried out in
terror.

 
          
 
A tall warrior grabbed Rock Mouse by the hair
as she ran from her lodge, pulling her over backward and throwing her on the
ground. Brave Man grimaced as he relived the sight, seeing the sun glint off a
stone-hafted war club raised high to bash the woman's brains out. Acting by
instinct, Brave Man planted his feet,
nocking
a dart
in the hook of his
atlatl
. With all of his
strength—ample even then—he drove a dart into the man's back. Too bad he
possessed only a boy's dart tipped with a crudely chipped point. A man's dart,
with its finely crafted point, might have driven clear through the warrior and
stopped him where he stood.