Native Gold (48 page)
He’d also promised her a home. He couldn’t say where or when, but he swore he’d find a place they could raise their sons in peace, a place they could belong.
As far as Mattie was concerned, home wasn’t a place. It was wherever Sakote and her children were. No matter where destiny led them, as long as Sakote remained beside her on the path, she was right where she belonged.
Sakote spit out some ridiculous, impossible to pronounce word as he wrapped sinew around the basalt knife he was crafting.
"What?" Mattie asked, lacing the second boy onto his willow and deerskin cradleboard. She slid it gently across the packed earth floor, closer to his drowsing brother and the warmth of the stone firepit, where the flames danced cheerily, casting merry shadows onto the cedar plank ceiling. "You’d give our sons names I can’t even pronounce?"
Sakote scowled, but it was a good-natured frown. Now that they’d found a peaceable place to settle, he was far too content to stay angry about anything for long.
She sat back on the low redwood stool and smiled as she put the finishing touches on the sketch of her sons. Then she set the drawing aside and stared into the fire, pretending to consider Sakote’s atrocious suggestions and letting her thoughts drift over the events of the past several weeks.
They’d traveled north for almost two hundred miles, much farther than Mattie had ever dreamed, but Sakote had been true to his word. Taking only his bow, his fire drill, and his stone knife, he’d managed to sustain all of them in relative comfort.
He’d cleverly made a fishing line from milkweed fiber and slivers of bone. He’d shot several rabbits to roast in the ground, though he wouldn’t let her make blankets for the babies from the skins, claiming that rabbit fur blinded infants. They’d snacked on hazelnuts and wild currants, and he’d shown her how to spot squirrel caches in the snow by the telltale pine-nut shells. She’d eaten things she’d never dreamed were edible, things like the fungus on oaks, the soft inner bark of fir trees, and the sugary powdered sap of the pine.
When the weather grew fierce, they’d hidden in caves or made their own huts out of the furry limbs of young evergreens.
But despite their grand adventure, Mattie was very happy to have secure walls about her now and a hearth to warm her toes by. She couldn’t pronounce what this village was called any more than she could pronounce the names Sakote had just spoken, but the native people that had welcomed them, the Hupa, were easy to understand. They were civilized and friendly. Their houses, with their sunken floors and haphazard angles, though clearly of tribal design, were equipped with solid cedar plank walls and gravel porches, and they lined a boulevard of sorts that made up the village of more than two dozen homes.
Best of all, the Hupa didn’t seem to mind that she was white or that Sakote was Konkow. They were an easygoing people with abundant game and land, who had little need for formal government since they had so few conflicts. They admired Mattie’s artistic hand, and once they discovered Sakote’s great talent for hunting, they embraced him as a brother.
"Tell me the first name again," she said with a sigh.
He repeated it. It was truly awful.
"And the other?"
Equally bad. It sounded as if he were choking.
"What do they mean?" she asked, exasperated, knowing it was the Konkow custom to name children for some event that happened shortly after their birth.
Though his eyes were fastened on the knife he made, Mattie thought there might have been the hint of a smile playing about his lips as he answered her. "Snoring-Duck and Pees-in-the-Water."
Mattie’s brows lifted, and her mouth made a perfect O. Then, whether Sakote was serious or not, she couldn’t help but burst out in peals of laughter.
Sakote ceased his work, raised his head proudly, and furrowed his brow sternly at her. "They are worthy names. They are the names of my ancestors."
Mattie didn’t bother stifling her giggles. Sakote grunted and went back to his work.
"I’ll make a bargain with you," she decided, reaching forward to rest her palm on his bare thigh. "You said you didn’t want to name them for another couple of years. I’ll name them now, and if you decide to change their names later, you may."
One corner of his mouth lifted. "Even if you can’t pronounce them?"
She returned his smile. "I’ll learn."
His eyes sparkling softly, he lifted her hand to kiss her fingertips.
Of course, he was teasing all along. She could see it now in the curve of his mouth. He had no intention of changing their names. Which was just as well, since she’d already chosen them anyway. They were a compromise—good English names with a touch of Konkow tradition, certainly better than Snoring-Duck or Pees-in-the-Water.
Mattie glanced over at their two as yet unchristened sons, snuggled quietly in their cozy nests in a rare moment of concurrent slumber.
She’d tell Sakote their names later, she decided, letting the backs of her fingers trail ticklishly along his muscular thigh. She’d tell him while he lay beneath her, warm between her thighs, while the sheen of lovemaking still misted his skin and the glow of satisfaction darkened his eyes.
"You wish to make a kiss with me?" he breathed, his eyes smoky and a sultry smile on his lips.
"Oh, yes."
CHASE WOLF AND DREW HAWK.
In the drawing, the twins slept with their dark downy heads turned toward each other, snug in the cradleboards their father had made for them. Above them, mingled with smoke from the fire burning on the hearth, were the mystical clouds of their dreams. In one boy’s cloud, Sakote waved his arms wildly, shooing away a hungry wolf. In the second cloud, Mattie sketched a hawk soaring overhead. The mist of the twins’ visions intertwined with the figures of their parents, and where they met, they formed a perfect circle, eternal and unbroken, like the sacred circle of their love.
AKINA
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The Knights of de Ware
The Warrior Maids of Rivenloch
The Shipwreck
(novella)
The Medieval Outlaws
The Scottish Lasses
The Winter Stone
—"The Outcast" (novella)
The California Legends
Book 2 of The California Legends
SPRING 1875
PARADISE, CALIFORNIA
Chase Wolf lifted his eyes to the grand mansion shining in the moonlight, and the corners of his mouth turned down.
Natives had built this princely manor for a white man who’d probably never soiled his hands on the Great Spirit’s earth. While revered Konkow headmen and gifted shamans like his grandmother blistered their palms and bent their backs to serve the rancher, Parker and his family lived like spoiled children, untouched by harsh winds or scorching sun or the indignity of hard labor. He wondered how Parker would fare as a slave, sweating and toiling for the profit of another.
Then a dark inspiration took hold. His lips slowly curved into a grim smile.
The march to Nome Cult.
He would force Parker to endure the march, as his people had. He’d prod the rancher across a hundred miles of rugged land, without water, without food, without shelter, until there was nothing left of him. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as his white mother’s Bible preached. That was how his grandmother would be avenged. That was how her spirit would find peace.