he’d clashed with often.
“How long you think she be dead?” Dega asked.
Evelyn shrugged. “I’m no judge. Pa and my brother would likely know just by looking at her. If I had to guess, I’d say a week, two at the most.” She turned to the lodge. “Anyone in there?” she called out. When there was no answer she switched to Shoshone.
Another body was inside. The scavengers had not been at it, but it had rotted and the maggots had done their grisly work. Evelyn gave it a quick scrutiny. “This one was a boy,” she reckoned. Not much younger than Dega, she reckoned.
“Cat again?”
“Yes,” Evelyn said. Slash marks on the dead boy’s buckskins confirmed it. “Let’s get out of here.” She pushed on the hide and took Buttercup’s reins and walked toward the stream. The stink faded and she could breathe again. She sucked air into her lungs and declared, “Thank God.”
Dega shared her revulsion. He never liked being around dead things. The Nansusequa always buried their dead within a day of death, usually with a feast and singing to celebrate passing to the other side. They didn’t weep and cut themselves as some tribes did. To them, death was a cause for happiness, not sorrow. “Those mother and son, you think?”
“Maybe,” Evelyn said. It begged the question of what had happened to the father. Could be the painter had gotten him, too.
“We bury them?”
Evelyn debated. That was the proper thing, she supposed. But there wasn’t much left of either the woman or the boy. And it wasn’t as if they were kin or even Shoshones. They were strangers. She felt no obligation. Besides, it would take time she would rather spend more pleasantly. “I think we should leave them where they are for their own people to find.”
“If you say,” Dega said. Though in his opinion a person should show respect for the dead as well as the living.
“We’ll go up the valley a ways and make camp,” Evelyn proposed. She mounted and clucked to Buttercup. She tried to shut the bodies from her mind and think only of Dega. “Are you hungry?”
“Not after them.”
Neither was Evelyn. The grisly find had spoiled her mood and her appetite. She refused to be discouraged, though. She had gone to all this trouble to be alone with him, and by God, she wasn’t going to let anything spoil it. Forcing a smile, she said, “We can’t let all the food I brought go to waste.”
Dega was shocked. That she could think of eating amazed him. “We eat later if that all right.”
For over a quarter of a mile Evelyn stuck to the tree line. She came on a spot where a crescent of grass indented the forest, and said merrily, “Look what we have here. This will do just fine.”
“What about cat?” Dega asked.
“It’s long gone by now,” Evelyn assured him. “My pa says they roam a large area. Fifty to a hundred miles or better.” She was more worried about a grizzly happening by. “We’re safe enough.”
“I hope,” Dega said.
Evelyn untied the picnic basket. From her parfleche she took a short stake, and using a rock, pounded the stake into the ground. She tied one end of a length of rope to the stake and looped the other end over Buttercup’s neck. “So she won’t stray,” she said when she noticed Dega looking at her.
“What I do with my horse?”
“I have more rope. We’ll tie off yours, too.”
Next Evelyn stripped off her saddle and saddle blanket. She was lowering the saddle when she realized Dega was still standing there. “Something the matter?”
“No.” Dega had been on the verge of bringing up the issue his mother had raised, but he couldn’t muster the courage.
“Make yourself useful. Fetch some firewood.”
“I be right back.” Dega went into the woods. The shadows were lengthening and it was uncommonly still. He marveled at the absence of life. In King Valley there were animals everywhere, but here all he saw were a few birds. His search for fallen limbs took him an arrow’s flight from the clearing. He was bending to pick up a short branch when an impression in the bare earth caught his attention: another cat print, only this one was smaller. To him it appeared as if part of the paw was missing.
Dega straightened. He hoped Evelyn was right about the mountain lion being gone. They were fierce fighters, those big cats. Troubled by his find, he started back. Without warning, the undergrowth to his left rustled. He turned and spied a vague shape low to the ground. Dropping the firewood, he raised his lance. He glimpsed what he took for a tawny hide and tensed, but whatever it was, it ran. He took several steps to try to get a better look, but the thing was gone. He waited to be sure it didn’t circle around. When he was convinced it was safe, he picked up the firewood and struck off for the clearing, more troubled than ever.
Evelyn was waiting for him. She had spread a blanket and set the food out. “There you are. I was beginning to think you got lost.”
Dega was insulted. His people prided themselves on their woodcraft. He could tell direction by the sun and the stars and had never been lost in his entire life. But he didn’t mention that. Instead he said, “I see something.”
“What?”
“I not know.”
“Was it the mountain lion?”
“I think too small,” Dega said.
“Good. That’s the last thing we need.” Evelyn patted the ground. “Why don’t you set that wood down and we’ll get the fire going?” She opened her parfleche and took out a fire steel and flint and her small box of tinder. Her father had taught her how to light a fire when she was little and she was so adept at it that in no time she had puffed a tiny flame to life and their fire was crackling and growing. She put the steel and flint and box in her parfleche and turned to Dega, who had sat across from her. “You can sit closer if you want. That way I don’t have to reach across to hand you food.”
Dega had never really noticed how she was always telling him what to do. He slid around the fire and she handed him a piece of pemmican.
“Help yourself to whatever else you want.” Evelyn was tickled. Here they were, at long last. She gazed on his handsome features and felt a stirring deep inside.
Normally Dega would be famished, but he was nervous, which wasn’t normal for him at all. “We need talk.”
“Yes,” Evelyn agreed. “We do.”
Just then a twig snapped and they both glanced at the ring of woods.
Something was staring back at them.
Chapter Twelve
For a few anxious moments Evelyn thought it was the mountain lion. Then she realized that the eye shine was different; the eyes were round, not slanted. “What is that?” she whispered.
Dega didn’t know. He went to rise and suddenly the thing spun, scrambling on all fours, just as it had done when he saw it before. His lance in hand, he ran to the woods.
Evelyn was quick to catch up. She raised the Hawken to her shoulder, but whatever it had been was gone. “This valley is starting to spook me.”
“Maybe we should go,” Dega said, proud that he got the English right.
“No.” Evelyn refused to be deprived of their night together. She had gone to great lengths. She had even lied to her parents. “It was probably just a rabbit.”
“Big for rabbit,” Dega said.
