fine, provided she agreed to bring up their children as Nansusequa. He took a step, and froze. A stealthy scrape had come out of the undergrowth to his left. Fingers flying, he unslung his bow and set the string. He slid an arrow from his quiver and nocked the shaft and drew the string, the barbed tip trained on the vegetation. It could be a deer. It could be a rabbit. It could be the beast that slew the Sheepeaters.
Something moved.
Dega strained his eyes. The thing appeared to be on all fours. He stood his ground, aware that if he loosed his shaft it might be deflected by intervening brush. Let the creature come closer, he told himself. Let it come out where he couldn’t miss. It was staring at him, as if curious. His fingers began to hurt from the strain of keeping the string pulled.
Suddenly the thing started toward him.
Over by the fire, Evelyn decided to try to hash out their differences. She gripped her Hawken and entered the woods, where she saw he had an arrow to his bow. “Dega?” she asked in concern. “What is it?”
Dega saw the shape stop and turn toward her. He still hadn’t had a good look at it.
“Dega? Didn’t you hear me?”
Like a rush of wind, the thing was off. Dega glimpsed pumping limbs—and something else. He blinked in surprise, and the apparition was no longer there. Lowering his bow, he plunged into the brush after it, certain he must be mistaken. Ahead, the shape flitted between two trees. He ran faster, but when he got to the same trees, beyond was a wall of woodland awash in the pale glow of the full moon, and nothing else. “Where did you get to?” he asked out loud in his own tongue.
“What did you see?” Evelyn came to his side, breathing heavily from their sprint.
“I saw…thing,” Dega said.
“Was it the mountain lion?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Dega shrugged, a typically white gesture he had learned from her. “It ran off.”
Evelyn lowered her Hawken. “Well, if it wasn’t a lion and it wasn’t a bear, we have nothing to worry about.”
Dega was inclined to agree, but ferocity came in small sizes as well as big. Wolverines weren’t half as large as bears, yet they were every bit as formidable.
“Want to head back?”
“Wait.” Dega hoped for another glimpse. It had to have been a trick of the light, but he needed to be sure. The woods stayed silent save for the sigh of the wind and the keening of a fox.
Evelyn shifted her weight from one foot to the other. They were wasting time, in her estimation. “I’d really like to talk more about this Nansusequa business.”
“Children must be Nansusequa,” Dega declared. Or it would crush his mother and be the end of his people, forever.
“Dang it,” Evelyn said. “Why are you being so pigheaded?”
This was a new one to Dega. A pig was an animal the whites raised. He had seen a few and their heads were nothing like his. “I do what must,” he said. Since the thing in the woods was gone, he wheeled and made for the fire. He sat cross-legged with the bow across his legs and glumly stared into the flames.
Evelyn had never seen him behave this way. She walked around and sat on the other side, her rifle in her lap. On the heights to the west a bear roared. To the northeast a wolf raised an ululating cry to the moon. She barely noticed. Neither was near enough to pose a danger. “I thought you cared for me.”
“I do,” Dega said.
“Then what in the world is going on? Why are you acting this way? You never said anything about this Nansusequa stuff before.”
“Not think of it before.”
“What brought it on?”
Dega hesitated. She might become mad at his mother if he told her the truth, so he said, “It bring on itself.”
Evelyn lapsed into silence. She supposed that from his point of view it was fitting that his children be raised Nansusequa. But to
Dega had never seen her so sorrowful. He squirmed and bowed his head and wondered if he was asking too much of her. Which led him to wondering if his mother was asking too much of him. He and his sisters were the last of their kind, yes. Unless he married one of them—and the Nansusequa never did that—any woman he took for his wife would have beliefs and habits of her own and would desire to raise their children accordingly. How, then, could he raise his children strictly as Nansusequa? He ran a hand over his brow. All this thinking was hurting his head.
Evelyn happened to gaze past him and stiffened. Something had appeared at the edge of the clearing. Not the mountain lion, something else. She discerned a low hump that could be…anything…watching them. “We have company,” she quietly announced.
Dega snapped out of himself. “Where?”
“Behind you. Don’t turn around. We don’t want to spook it.” Evelyn put another branch on the fire and the flames grew. So did the circle of firelight but not far enough to reach the…thing.
“Maybe it what we chase.”
“Do you have any notion what it is?”
Dega did, but his eyes might have been mistaken. “Night play trick on me. I not sure.”
“It’s not big enough to be a threat,” Evelyn said. “Maybe it will just go away.” The next moment, to her astonishment, the thing started to grow. It rose until it was three times as tall. Its silhouette was too vague for her to identify, but one fact was apparent. “My God! It’s standing on two legs.”
Not only that, it was coming toward them.
Chapter Thirteen
Evelyn held her breath. She wrapped her hands around the Hawken, ready to jerk it up and shoot.
Dega looked over his shoulder. He had been right, then. The night hadn’t played tricks on him. “It is a person.”
Evelyn had reached the same conclusion. She forced a smile and said, “How do you do?”
Whoever it was halted just beyond the firelight.
“Do you speak English?” Evelyn asked, and when she got no response, she asked the same thing in Shoshone.
The figure stood motionless.
“We’re friendly,” Evelyn said. “We’re only staying the night.” She noticed that the horses had raised their heads and were staring at the figure. Neither betrayed any alarm. “Why don’t you come closer? We won’t hurt you.”
The figure stayed where it was.
“What do we do?” Evelyn whispered to Dega.
“We not move,” Dega said. It pleased him that she had asked his opinion instead of telling him what to do.
Evelyn had a thought. She picked up a corn cake and held it out. “Would you like something to eat? There’s plenty if you’re hungry and we’re more than happy to share.”
The figure took a step and the firelight played over it.
Astonishment caused Evelyn to stiffen and blurt, “My God! It’s a little girl!”
The child was dirty and disheveled, her face smeared with grime. Her buckskin dress was filthy and torn. Her
