“Well, it sure wasn’t the cat that killed those poor Sheepeaters.” Evelyn lowered the Hawken and made bold to take his hand. “Come on. Let’s finish our meal.”
There was so much Evelyn wanted to say, and now that she had the opportunity, she couldn’t bring herself to. She spread butter on a slice of bread and took a bite and chewed but didn’t taste it.
Dega nibbled a piece of pemmican. He had held off as long as he could. Then, taking a deep breath, he asked, “You like me, yes?”
“I more than like you,” Evelyn responded. Here was her chance to come right out and say what was in her heart, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
“I more than like you,” Dega said. “I more than like you very much.”
“You don’t know how happy you’ve just made me.”
“Happy is good.” Dega struggled to say it right. So many English words had different meanings or shades of meaning that choosing the best was difficult. “Want to ask question.”
“Ask away.” Evelyn smiled to encourage him.
“Could be we go on liking more than much?” Dega had to force his mouth to say the next part. “Could be we want be husband and wife?”
Evelyn’s heart gave a flutter. “Yes?” she said breathlessly.
“What then?” Dega asked.
“Sorry?” Evelyn said, mildly confused. “How do you mean?”
“What we do after?”
“I reckon we’d do as most married folks do,” Evelyn replied. “Live together. Do things together.” The idea of one of those things made her cheeks grow warm.
“Have little ones?”
Evelyn grew warmer and coughed. “Having babies is part of married life. Why? Are you hankering to have some?” She thought her ears were about to burn off.
“I like maybe have son one day,” Dega said. “Teach him as Father teach me. It be great funness.”
Evelyn didn’t correct him. “And you want to know how I feel about having kids, is that it?”
“No,” Dega said. “I want know about…” He stopped and racked his brain. “About how you want teach them.”
“Teach them what?” Evelyn asked, confused again.
“Teach them all there be.”
Evelyn had a ready answer. “I would teach them as my mother and father taught me. How to live, how to do things. More important, I would teach them to be honest and true.” She felt a twinge of conscience at that.
“You teach white ways?” Dega voiced his innermost concern.
“White ways. Shoshone ways. All that I have learned I would pass on to them.”
“Oh.”
Evelyn was puzzled by the disappointment in his voice. “Isn’t that what any parent would do?”
“What about Nansusequa ways?”
“We would teach them those, too. It goes without saying,” Evelyn assured him.
“Nansusequa and white and Shoshone,” Dega said.
“Yes.”
“All three.”
“Doesn’t that make sense?”
Until his talk with his mother, Dega would have agreed it made perfect sense. Now he harbored doubts. “Then they not be Nansusequa.”
“What are you talking about? If you teach your children your ways, they will be as Nansusequa as you are.”
“No. They be white and Shoshone, too. Only be Nansusequa if they only learn Nansusequa.”
Evelyn was trying to comprehend his insistence. “I was raised white and Shoshone, and look at me.”
“You mostly white.”
“Not entirely,” Evelyn objected, even though he was right. She’d never taken to the Shoshone way of life as fully as her brother. Not that she had anything against them. She had just always favored her father’s side of the family, not just in looks. She liked to eat white food and to wear white clothes and she had loved town and city life. How strange, then, that she was in love with someone who wasn’t white.
“I need children be Nansusequa,” Dega said. “Only Nansusequa. Not white. Not Shoshone.”
“Oh,” Evelyn said, deeply disturbed. “When did you come to that conclusion?” This was the first she had heard of it.
As they talked, the valley darkened with the onset of night. In the distance carnivores made their presence known.
“The day before this one. What it be called again?”
“Yesterday.”
“Yes. Yesterday,” Dega said, bobbing his chin.
“What brought it on? Why is it suddenly so important to you that your children be raised Nansusequa and only Nansusequa?”
Dega helped himself to a carrot and bit off the end. He chewed slowly, the crunch loud in his ears. “Important not just me. Important for people.”
“But you five are the last Nansusequas left,” Evelyn brought up. “You
“Want more of us,” Dega explained. “Want many Nansusequa. Like before white men attacked village.”
“You aim to rebuild your tribe?” Evelyn was appalled that he was bringing this up now, of all times. She reached over and placed her hand on his. “We can talk more about this when we get back.”
“Now,” Dega said.
“Why is it so blamed important?” Evelyn was growing annoyed. All the trouble she had gone to, and he threw this into her lap. “You and me wouldn’t have kids for a good many years.”
“Must find out now.”
“Why, consarn it?”
“So have right woman.”
His reply was akin to a physical blow to Evelyn’s gut. He was saying she might not be right for him. “Let me be sure I savvy. You’re saying that any children of yours have to be raised as Nansusequa and nothing but Nansusequa?”
“Yes,” Dega confirmed, happy that he had gotten his point across.
“And you don’t give a hoot about the wife’s feelings? She can go to Hades for all you care?”
Dega was worried; she sounded mad. He remembered that “hoot” was the sound an owl made. How that applied in this instance was a mystery. So was “Hades.” Shakespeare McNair had used that word once or twice and he recalled it had something to do with people who lived deep underground. So if he understood Evelyn, she was saying he was not sounding like an owl and he wanted his wife to live under the earth.
“You’re not being reasonable,” Evelyn said. “If a person is half-and-half and she has a baby, there is nothing wrong with her wanting to raise it whichever half she’d like.”
“You want raise baby white and Nansusequa?”
“That’s fairest.”
Dega was torn between his mother’s appeal and Evelyn’s logic. Both had merit. But his mother had touched him deeply with her desire to see their tribe reborn. The Nansusequa could rise again—only if he and his sisters stood firm in how their children were to be reared. Suddenly standing, he declared, “I must think.” The hurt that came into Evelyn’s eyes made his gut tighten. She was upset and he couldn’t blame her. Wheeling, he crossed to the forest. Clenching his fists in anger at how their outing had been spoiled, he realized he had left his lance by the fire.
Evelyn was in despair. Always before, they talked their differences out. Granted, most were minor, and she had come to think that they saw eye to eye on most everything. This new spat didn’t bode well for their future. She reached for the tin of raisins and put it down again. She wasn’t hungry anymore.
Dega stopped and looked back. He wanted to go to Evelyn and embrace her and tell her everything would be
