People of the Fire (19 page)

 
          
 
Two Elks nodded sadly and stepped across to
the door flap, a weathered hand bracing his ancient body as he pushed the
hanging aside and stepped into the light.

 
          
 
After he'd gone, Heavy Beaver noticed the old
man had stepped on his raven's foot and crushed it.

 
          
 
"My way ... or no way, Uncle." Just
like my mother said, old man. Just like she saw—and you
didn
't.

 
          
 
Raising his voice to the chant, he began
beating on his drum, matching the hollow beats to the pulsing of his own heart.
They'd learn now. And, of course, Sage Root—no matter how scared—would never
come begging to him.

 
          
 
"He knows nothing of Power. What he calls
Dreams, he makes up in his head. I wonder why you allow him to make fools of
the People. They've begun to accept the fact that this imaginative deceiver is
a Dreamer.

 
          
 
Wolf Dreamer answered through the shimmering
balance of the Circles: "Human beings have their own wills and abilities
to discern true Power from lies. Leave them to their ends. You and I, brother,
must follow ours. "

 
          
 
The Wolf Bundle considered.
"Nevertheless, it would be so easy, simply a touch at the edge of his
soul, and the balance of his life would be changed. Aflutter of Power around
his heart and none would be the wiser. Why should the People suffer? Where is
the purpose in their agony?"

 
          
 
"I'm not interested in their agony. They
can choose their way . . . as can Heavy Beaver. I have other commitments.
"

 
          
 
"The boy?"

 
          
 
“Of course.'' A pause. ''If he lives. I may
have made a mistake in calling White Calf "

 
          
 
"You always had a softness for old women."

 
          
 
"If I do, it's none of your concern."

 
          
 
"And you’d sacrifice the People for the
boy? You’d allow so much suffering?"

 
          
 
“I have to. A deadly dart point isn’t crafted
from flawed stone. "

 
          
 
Chokecherry ducked out of her lodge and
squinted up at the sun, resenting the heat that beat mercilessly down. Below
the camp, even the cottonwoods looked limp where they grew out of the Moon
River's banks. Leaves flickered lazily back and forth in the morning breeze.
Moon River itself consisted of braided channels lacing through
lenticular
mud bars. The water barely rippled. Gray-white
cobbles marked old beds— now nothing more than the bones of the river.

 
          
 
Along the sun-bleached bank stood Heavy
Beaver's sweat lodge—banned to the women now. She lifted her lip at the sight.

 
          
 
To the southwest, Chokecherry could make out
the tall conical mountain called Beaver Tooth where it stuck up above the
Elk
Place
Mountains
that rimmed the western horizon. Might be
cool up there. A good place to go—if only Heavy Beaver would move the camp.

 
          
 
The thought of him brought acid to her
stomach. Curse the fool anyway, why did anyone . . . the Curse!

 
          
 
She turned, looking across the beaten soil to
Heavy Beaver's lodge. There, standing tall in the light, stood four dark
sticks, each thrust into the ground.

 
          
 
A cold chill churned Chokecherry's gut.
"Dung and flies, girl. He's done it." Her
taloned
fingers knotted in the front of her calfskin dress, old and shabby now from
long wear. Steeling herself, she walked across to Hungry Bull's lodge, rounding
the curve to find Sage Root sitting in the door flap, staring wide-eyed at the
sticks, her beautiful face blanched.

 
          
 
"What's this? Maggots in pus, girl!
That's what he wants you to do."

 
          
 
Sage Root continued to stare, barely aware of
her.

 
          
 
"Get up!" Chokecherry hissed.
"Hear me? Get up!"

 
          
 
The boy peeked around from inside the lodge.

 
          
 
"Son, help your mother up. We've got to
get her out of sight of those foul sticks of his." She took one of Sage
Root's ice-cold hands, tugging, while the boy tugged at the other. Sage Root
shook her head, clambered to her feet, and followed without fuss. Chokecherry
led off toward the river.

 
          
 
"That's what he wants, girl. You're
supposed to stare like that ... to dwell on what's going to happen to
you."

 
          
 
"He's ... a Spirit Dreamer. What if he's
right? What if—"

 
          
 
"Hush, now. That's just what he's trying
to get you to think." Chokecherry led her down beside the dry banks of
Moon River, stopping at the edge of one of the rills. Bending down, she drank
of the cool water, filling her parched tissues.

 
          
 
"Come on, girl. Drink. Then I'm taking
you and the boy to my lodge and fixing some of that antelope you trapped. And
after that, we're going to have a long talk about Power and how it works."
She shook her head "Wish my fool sister were here for once."

 
          
 
She caught the awed stare in the boy's eyes.
He beamed at her, eager to hear. What was it about him? Now his eye gone
unfocused, staring out over the sere plains, absently following the flight of
an eagle where the bird rose high on the thermals.

 
          
 
"Come on, let's go feed the two of you.
You're both getting a little moon-eyed."

 
          
 
Blood Bear might have been a snake sunning
itself. He waited, belly-down, in a thorny green mat of rosebushes. From where
he lay, he could look out through a ground-squirrel run and right into the
lodge occupied by the woman and Two Smokes. The rest of the camp sweltered in
the late-afternoon heat. He could feel the tension. He could see it in the way
they moved, in their uneasy glances and subdued conversation.

 
          
 
He'd found no chance to sneak into Two Smokes'
lodge before dawn. When he'd crawled close, the woman had been sitting in the
entrance, eyes fixed on the shaman's lodge across the way. She hadn't moved,
hadn't left for any longer than it took to relieve herself behind the lodge.

 
          
 
Turning his head ever so slowly, Blood Bear
studied each of the lodges, listening to the Spirit Man's odd chanting to the
hollow beat of the drum. For a brief moment, he shivered, feeling the stub of
his little finger. Of all the stupid things he'd ever done, that rankled the
most deeply.

 
          
 
I don’t believe in such foolishness as Power,
It's all curious myth and legend. That's all.

 
          
 
At that point, an old woman walked around Two
Smokes' lodge and, with the help of the boy, dragged the pretty woman to her
feet, leading her away.

 
          
 
And if something's happening, perhaps Id best
move first. He raised his head slightly, checking each of the knots of people
where they talked in the shade of their lodges, heads bobbing, all eyes on the
Spirit Man's lodge and the curious sticks standing there. So long as the wind
held and the dogs didn't get his scent, or someone didn't decide to use the
rosebushes to relieve himself, he'd be fine.

 
          
 
But a person never knew when a party of
hunters might return, or when an accident might happen to disclose him.

 
          
 
In the shade of a lodge, one of the dogs
shifted, sighed, and rolled on its side, legs out. As the dog's breathing
deepened, the eyes closed.

           
 
A fly buzzed in the afternoon. The cottonwood
leaves overhead barely rustled.

 
          
 
A stillness settled over the drowsy camp.

 
          
 
Sage Root bent to do Chokecherry's bidding
even though her mind knotted with other preoccupations. She drank her fill of
the gritty water, enjoying the mineral aftertaste for the first time. Around
her, the world seemed so bright, so clear and warm—unlike the chill inside.

 
          
 
She ran a loving hand over her son's head,
following Chokecherry as she led the way up the path. Sage Root blinked, trying
to clear her oddly dulled mind. Her thoughts blurred, as if her head had been
stuffed with fur—or the cottony seeds of milkweed. She couldn't think with as
much clarity as before.

 
          
 
As she walked, she couldn't help but look to
Heavy Beaver's lodge, seeing the sticks, feeling the malevolence of their
presence. Something in her soul whimpered.

 
          
 
“Come on," Chokecherry insisted, gripping
her by the hand and pulling her down and into the amber-lit insides of the
lodge. "Sit."

 
          
 
She went where Chokecherry pointed, dropping
herself onto a roll of elk hide, propping her back on one of the willow
backrests. Little Dancer settled beside her, staring around, one hand tucked
reassuringly in hers.

 
          
 
Chokecherry's lodge—like most of the
People's—had a shabby look. Overhead the cover shaded from buff to gray to
black with soot from so many fires. Peeled poles formed a base three paces
across and rose to a tall man's height. A thicker center pole supported the
whole, the tops of all soot-blackened. Chokecherry set about rolling up the
bottoms of the lodge to allow the breeze to blow through.

 
          
 
Here and there,
parfleches
lay about the perimeter and one of Chokecherry's old dogs stared at her from
the side. A big beast, it carried most of Chokecherry's possessions when the
band traveled to new camps. Even the dogs looked worn these days; their gaunt
sides had gone slat-ribbed. The barking and howling normal to the village pack
seemed subdued. But then, so many of the pups had been clunked in the head and
thrown into stew that she couldn't blame them. The People had grown irritable.
Fighting dogs pushed them past the tolerance point.

 
          
 
Chokecherry wiped her hands, satisfied with
the fire. She bent to the fire pit, stirring the ashes, blowing a coal alive as
she fed it shredded sagebrush bark, adding bits of cotton-wood branch until she
had a crackling blaze. Then she piled rocks to heat in the center, digging
ornately carved spoon bowls out of a
parfleche
.

 
          
 
Another time, Sage Root might have stopped to
marvel at the pieces. Each had been carved from the boss of a
mountain-sheep-horn sheath. The rich mottled brown and tan had been polished
with fine sand until it glistened. The forms of buffalo, elk, deer, and
antelope had been most carefully engraved on the sides while hunters surrounded
the whole, darts flying.

 
          
 
"Now, tell me. Did you sit there all
night looking at those sticks?"

 
          
 
Sage Root closed her eyes, nodding. By the
Hero Twins, she'd hated herself for it. Through the long hours of night, as the
filling moon traced its way across the heavens, she'd watched, seeing the angle
of the shadows cast by the sticks slowly creeping across the ground. The chill
in her soul had grown, eating away at the very warmth of her body until she sat
like ice, feeling each beat of her heart. Time had begun to drag, slowing,
becoming less and less real. The world had changed subtly, becoming an eerie
place.

 
          
 
Not even the gentle breathing of her son
beside her had affected the chill.

 
          
 
"Sage Root, listen to me. You're doing
this to yourself. Do you understand?" Chokecherry hunched over, staring
into her eyes.

 
          
 
For a moment, Sage Root let herself surrender
to those warm brown depths, let herself believe the sincerity she saw there.
Chokecherry caught that flicker of acknowledgment and smiled warmly.

 
          
 
"Now, you've got to pull yourself
together and think. Heavy Beaver wants you to stare at those sticks. He wants
you to feel them in your very soul. If you let yourself do that, if you let
yourself play into his hands, you'll will yourself to die."

 
          
 
“But he's a Spirit Dreamer."

 
          
 
"I don't believe that. And I don't think
you do either. After you let your imagination play with your head all night,
you're not sure. That's the part of you he's betting on, preying on-like some
sort of parasite. Sage Root, look at me. He's got his claws into you. Are you
going to let him wiggle in the rest of the way?"

 
          
 
She dropped her head in her hands, feeling her
son's grip tightening on her skirt. "I don't know."

 
          
 
"The other night, you chose to eat the
meat. You knew he'd do this, yet you still chose. Why?"

 
          
 
She ground her teeth. "Because I had to.
It was the right thing. I don't know. I felt so strong. I thought I could stand
up to him, that it would be all right."

 
          
 
"And then?"

 
          
 
"Then I came back to the lodge last night
with a load of dried meat. And I looked over and saw the sticks and it all
became real. He's going to kill me. He's always hated me. I felt the Power of
that. Hate, I mean. It's a powerful thing— and it's all turned against
me."