Child of the Dead (27 page)

The People waited. By custom and by order of the council, no individual would hunt before the formally announced Spring Hunt. To do so might frighten the herds away without a sufficient kill to supply the needs of the entire band. If necessary, the order would be enforced by the Bowstrings. It was seldom necessary, though. The penalties for breaking the custom were severe.

So the People waited, and the announcement finally came. The wolves had located a herd of appropriate size in a favorable place. Tomorrow would be the Spring Hunt.

T
he hunt went smoothly. The wolves had done well, planning the approach and the killing charge. The goal was to induce the buffalo to circle, instead of breaking away in a straight run to the freedom of the far horizons. With this in mind, the line of mounted hunters approached quietly, moving upwind to avoid the telltale breeze that would carry the scent of man.

They were within a bowshot when the first cow raised her head with a questioning grunt. The eyesight of the animals was not very acute, but their keen sense of smell and motion compensated well. The old matriarch sensed something unusual in the figures that moved toward them, and now gave a snort of alarm as she turned to run.

In the space of a few heartbeats the herd was running, pushed by the riders. An animal fell, the fatal arrow jutting from its rib cage. Another … A young hunter with a lance approached from the left of a fat young bull, made his thrust and withdrawal, and moved on after the herd.

Now a selected trio, young men of the Elk-dog Society, emerged from a fringe of sumac to the left. Riding hard at the leaders of the running herd, they would try to turn the animals in a circling direction. It was a dangerous move. A misstep or a stumble could throw a rider beneath the thundering hooves of the herd. Yet
even one circle of the broad meadow would allow the hunters another few kills. There were always young men willing to show their bravery by making the try. If they lived, it was with great honor. If they died, the same. How could one lose?

The circling herd was beginning to break up now. Individual animals or twos and threes would manage to break out of the circling mass. Dust rose, obscuring the vision and choking the lungs.

“Let them go!” called Yellow Moccasin, leader of the hunt. It was too dangerous to continue to circle in the uncertain visibility. “We have enough!”

The air began to clear as the breeze carried the dusty pall away from the hunt scene. Dark bodies lay strewn across the little valley. Here and there a rider hunted down a crippled animal and finished it. Men identified their own kills by the markings on their arrow shafts, and motioned to the approaching butcher parties.

Gray Mouse had considered joining the hunt as a hunter. It would have been permissible, and she nearly decided to do so. The day before the hunt, however, she rejected the idea. It would draw attention to her, and that was something she wished to avoid. The more she could be unnoticed, the less chance she would be missed quickly when she left the Sun Dance.

So she joined the butchering parties. That would give her more unnoticed access to the drying meat, anyway, so that she could assemble supplies.

The apologies were performed.

“We are sorry to kill you, my brother, but upon your flesh our lives depend. May your people be strong and many …”

Then the work began. Skinning, butchering, rolling the heavy carcasses to give access to the necessary portions. It was hard work, but a time of joy for the resulting bounty. As the internal organs were exposed, a bite or two of the raw liver was a prized delicacy. Still warm from the animal’s body heat, this spring tonic was a means to satisfy the craving for life-giving nutrients not available from winter stores. As the buffalo and the horses hungered for the lush green of the spring grasses, so the People were starved for the bounty of fresh meat.
The longing was now satisfied, and in every way, the hunt was a success.

Gray Mouse tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible. In this she had little difficulty. There was so much excitement and so much to be done that it was unlikely anyone would pay much attention to one teen-aged girl. She was busily engaged in scraping hides, slicing meat, attending to the drying strips on willow racks near the fire … All of these were normal, expected actions, so no one noticed.

It was nearly a moon before the Southern band struck the big lodges and moved on toward the site of the Sun Dance to meet the other bands. Mouse’s little cache of provisions, unknown to anyone, was wrapped and tied in her extra dress and stowed in a rawhide carrier pack.

At last she was heading toward her own people. Sometimes Mouse felt that she could hardly refrain from showing her excitement. The plan was taking on more form in her mind as the time neared. She had been asking questions of any people they encountered. Cautiously, of course. It must not be apparent what she was doing.

A casual question to a woman of a Grower village … A conversation with the wife of an Arapaho trader who stopped with the People for a few sleeps and a little bartering.

“Have you seen an ornament like this?” she would ask casually.

Mostly she had been met with blank looks and negative shakes of the head. It was the trader’s wife who nodded, but still in an uncertain manner.

“Do you know this sign?” asked the girl eagerly, making the hand signal that she had retained through all the years. “The nation of …”

Recognition dawned on the face of the other woman.

“Those? They are the ones you seek? Yes, we know them. We visited them last season.”

The woman turned and shouted something to her husband in their own tongue.

“No, no,” Mouse said quickly. “Do not trouble
your husband. It is not important.” She must avoid the attention which would surely be drawn to her if this conversation persisted. “The ornament was given to me,” she hastily explained. “I only wanted to know from where it came.”

The trader’s woman nodded, looking a bit puzzled. “So that is where. They are far to the north.”

“It is good,” said Mouse, smiling politely. “Thank you!” She slipped away.

The following morning she made occasion to encounter the woman at the stream.

“Mother,” she began politely. “I would know a little more of those people to the north.” She gave the hand sign.

“Yes, I was made to think so, child,” the woman said. “They are your people?”

“I do not know. I was found by these. My own were dead.”

“Ah! A war?”

“No, no. The
poch
.”

“Oh. We heard that your Elk-dog People … Yes, this band, was it not? Seven, eight summers ago?”

“No … well, yes. Ten, maybe.”

“Ah, how the seasons fly!” The woman shook her head.

“But I was with my own people then, Mother. They died, and a woman of these took me, became my grandmother.”

“Ah, I see! And you wonder about your own!”

“Yes, that is it,” Mouse said eagerly. “Can you tell me?”

“Ah, let me remember. A small nation … They fear the Lakotas, but everyone does there.”

“
Where?”

“Ah, I cannot … north. North of the river, the
Miss-ouree
, maybe.”

“What others are there? Who would know?” Mouse demanded. “Lakota?”

“Maybe. But why do you ask, child? You do not want to
go
there?”

It was more of a statement than a question, and Gray Mouse realized that she might have gone too far. If
this woman talked to others of the Southern band, her secret plan would become common knowledge.

Mouse laughed. “I?
Aiee
, Mother, how could I do that? I am not that foolish!”

The woman chuckled, looking not quite convinced. “Of course. Well, I cannot tell you much more. Yours is a small tribe. Two or three bands. They camp with the Crows sometimes. Bird People.” She gave the hand sign for the Crow Nation. “That, to protect them from Lakotas, maybe.”

A couple of other women were approaching, and Mouse was anxious to terminate the conversation.

“And you are leaving today?” she asked in a clearly audible tone.

The woman studied her for a moment, and Mouse felt that the gaze was filled with unspoken meaning.
She knows!
the girl thought, her palms moist from the tension of trying to guess what the woman might say next.
She knows that I will go there
. The other women were only a few steps away now.

“Yes, we must be traveling,” said the trader’s wife pleasantly.

She lifted her waterskins and waded across the shallow riffle toward the shore.

“May you travel well, Mother!” Mouse called.

“And you!” the woman called.

There was a moment as the other women began to fill their skins when the trader’s wife was passing close to Gray Mouse. Only a moment … The woman looked straight into her eyes and again Mouse had the feeling that her innermost thoughts were visible.

“Be careful,” the woman said softly yet casually. She walked on up the slope and out of sight.

Gray Mouse watched her go and felt somehow that here was a kindred spirit. The woman understood that Mouse
must
do this thing, no matter how dangerous. She could not rest until she did so. She was tempted to run after her, to thank her, but that would not be good. The woman did not turn back to look, and Mouse did not see her again.

She filled the waterskins and made her way back to the lodge. People were rising and activity was increasing.
Another day in the lives of the People was under way. But for Gray Mouse, the most important event of the day had already occurred.

Maybe the most important of my life
, she thought.
I know how to find my people!

I
t was a strange feeling of familiarity with which Gray Mouse approached the Sun Dance site.
This has happened before
, she thought, in a moment of confusion that was almost panic.
I know this place!

The gray face of the distant cliff seemed to cry out to her with a mixed message. There was a dark warning that reached her spirit with a hint of danger. Yet there was also a call to adventure, to go and seek and learn. It seemed to fit her mood perfectly.

But why the feeling of familiarity? It did not take long to understand. Mouse was intentionally trying to remain inconspicuous. She had found that in doing so, there was a certain advantage. She could listen and learn. It was in this way that she began to realize … She
had
been here before, as a confused, frightened child. It was the site of her meeting with the People when she and Grandmother had first rejoined them.

She had been distracted by many things. The People had been curious. Some had been kind, others had talked of her as if she were not present. And to the end of her days, Mouse would never forget the wrath of Grandmother over the “Child of the Dead” name.
Aiee!

And it had been
here
, at this place. It now struck her as quite fitting. Her life with the People had begun here. Let it end here, as she departed quietly in the search for her own heritage. There was sadness in it. She
knew that Grandmother would grieve. It was too bad. Mouse would miss her, too. But after all Mouse had not asked for this relationship. It had been a thing that happened. A chance meeting along the trail, where the paths of two lifetimes had happened to cross.

Three, maybe. Her relationship with Dark Antelope had been good. He had been a brother, a protector, many things to her. She had felt: a romantic urge toward him as she matured physically. For a while she had even been quite comfortable with the thought of her own lodge, shared with Antelope. That was still a warm, exciting thought. And maybe …
No!
She thrust that thought aside. Before she could even consider such things, she must know. She must find her own people and recover the heritage that had been taken from her. She clasped a hand around the beaded pendant that bobbed against her breast.

Singing Wolf … The holy man would feel sorrow at her leaving. Mouse felt it too, as if she were betraying his trust. He had been a kind and dependable figure to a fatherless child. Yet she knew that of all the People, Singing Wolf was probably best able to understand the urgency of her quest.
After all
, she thought almost defiantly,
was it not Wolf who suggested it?
There was a nagging thought that this was not really what Wolf intended, but she thrust it aside. He
would
understand her need to know, she was certain.