we could take with us.
Glancing around I saw Itchakomi. She put her hand out to catch a snowflake. It hit her palm and then vanished. She gave a little cry of amazement. 'It is gone!'
'They melt quickly sometimes.'
She looked at me. 'You have seen snow?'
'Much of it on the mountains, and once we hunted far to the north and there was snow. We returned home.'
'Will it stay?'
'For months, I think. Five or six moons,' I suggested. 'I do not know. Some years are colder than others.'
'It is not a good place for my people,' she said. 'They do not understand.'
'They could learn, and there is much game.' I pointed toward the western hills. 'They could lose themselves in the mountains. It is beautiful there.'
'I shall go back,' she said.
'I shall go west, I think. Or perhaps I'll stay here, at the edge of the plains.' I had not thought of it until that moment but suddenly I decided. I would stay. I would find a place somewhere along the edge of the mountains, and stay.
The thought was strange to me, who thought only of wandering. A foolish thought that would go away. I was sure of that. Yet the idea lingered.
'Here?' she looked around. 'But you are alone! There will be nobody!'
I shrugged. 'I am often alone. It is my nature.'
'But you would need a woman!'
'In time I'd find one.' I smiled. 'Maybe even a Conejero woman. Or an Acho, like Keokotah.'
Her eyes were cool. She glanced at me and then looked away.
'Indian men need women to prepare the hides for them,' I said. 'After a hunt there is much work, but I can do my own, and have done them. On this trip I have made moccasins, and when necessary I can make my leggings and jacket. When I marry it will be for love.'
'Love? What is love?'
It was something of which I knew nothing, yet something of which I had thought a good deal. Too much for a man who did not intend to take a woman ... yet.
'It is something between a man and woman, something that goes beyond just being man and woman. It is a feeling between them, a sharing of interests, a walking together, it is--'
Keokotah was suddenly there. 'Somebody comes!' he said.
Stepping to a place where I could look through the trees, I saw them.
Two men standing beside the creek, looking toward us.
Chapter Eighteen.
We held ourselves still, knowing a movement might be seen, hoping no smoke was visible from the caves behind and above us. After several minutes of looking around they turned to go, crossing the stream and walking back toward the way they had come.
'Conejeros!' Keokotah said.
Neither of us replied. We simply watched. I know my heart was beating slowly, heavily. I thought of my guns back in the cave. It was foolish to have them and not carry them always. When their time would come I did not know, but they were something on which to rely, something that might save us all.
The Conejeros had probably fought the Spanishmen, so they would be familiar with guns, but mine were far more accurate than any other firing weapons I had ever seen. Of their kind they were masterpieces, as their maker had intended them to be. My future might depend on them, and that of Itchakomi.
Now the strangers were gone, or apparently gone. Still we did not move, for they might yet be within sight of us, might turn and look back. 'Thank God,' I said, 'there were no tracks!'
Itchakomi turned and looked at me. 'Who is God?' she asked.
For a minute I just stood there. How to answer such a question? I was no preacher or priest. I was no student of religion. I knew so very, very little!
'He is the Father. He is present in all things. He--'
'--is the Sun?'
'That would be one way in which he reveals himself. I believe he is more than just the sun.'
'Justthe Sun?' Her eyes were cool. 'The Sun gives life to all things.' She turned her dark eyes to me. 'The Sun was our ancestor.'
Religion was a topic I avoided. I felt myself inadequate to discuss it. Each man seemed to have a different idea about it. Moreover I had discovered that few things led more quickly to anger. 'Perhaps you are right,' I replied mildly. 'Men have found many explanations and perhaps each contains some element of truth. I am not a scholar, only one who wishes he could be.'
'What is it, a scholar?'
'I suppose a scholar is one who studies the origins of things, the laws of society and how men came to be what they are and where they are. I am not a scholar, and I have known but one, my teacher Sakim.'
'He was an Englishman?'
'No.' I squatted above the snow and with a twig I drew a rough map of Europe, Asia, and Africa, 'England is here, and Sakim came from over here.' I indicated a place in Central Asia not far from Samarkand, yet the map was unbelievably crude. 'Long ago many scholars came from there. Now they seem to come from further west.'
'Why?'
I shrugged. 'I know only that civilizations seem to be like people. They are born, they grow to maturity, then they age and lose their vitality and they die, only to be born again in later years.'
'And where are we?'
I moved back, indicated the breadth of the Atlantic, and then North America and a place on it. 'We are about here. The Natchee lived about there.' I indicated a place on a river above a gulf.
For a long time she studied it. Then the wind began to grow chill, and I shifted my feet, wiggling my toes against the cold in my moccasins.
'It is so, this?'
Keokotah had looked at it and then looked away. I do not believe he was interested. It all seemed remote to him, remote from the lands he knew, remote from these mountains.
'I do not believe this,' she smudged the map suddenly with her toe. 'I have heard nothing of this. Even the Ni'kwana has not spoken of it.'
'You asked.'
We walked back to the cave together, neither of us speaking. At the path between our two caves she stopped. 'You are from this place, England?'
'My father was.'
'The Warriors of Fire? They come from there?'
'From nearby. They are enemies of England, most of the time. They have many ships, many soldiers. They have conquered lands to the south. They killed many, made slaves of others. They destroyed their gods.'
'They cannot destroy the Sun.'
'No.' I smiled. 'They would not wish to. They need its warmth as we do.'
She lingered. 'The tracks in the snow? Could you do them for me again?'
'I shall try. Maybe on a bark, or better still a deer hide.'
'I do not believe it but I should like to see what you believe. If such strange tribes had been, the Ni'kwana would have spoken of them.'
'Before my father came to America he had never heard of the Natchee. The Englishmen who live near Plymouth have never heard of the Natchee. Even the Indians who live nearby do not know of the Natchee, yet the Natchee are important people. No man knows all the peoples. No man knows all the lands. So far as we know I am the first of my people to come this far, and perhaps none of my people will ever know that I came here, or that I met you.'
