Devil Moon

dark one had to range wide and far to find enough meat to sustain them, and at that it was barely enough.

A new spring restored their world. On a bright afternoon, she and the dark one were prowling a high ridge near the old den of a brown bear. A marmot spotted them and whistled. She didn’t stalk it. When she was young she had tried to catch them, but marmots always disappeared down into their holes before she could get close.

She and the dark one moved along a trail once used by the great bear. She came to a short piece of wood jutting from the ground and sniffed at it, puzzled by the faintest of vague odors. The dark one came and sniffed, too. He took a step past her and she heard a snap and suddenly he sprang into the air, screeching with pain. His left forepaw was caught in something that had been covered with leaves and dirt, and the paw was spurting blood. He snarled at it and twisted and pulled and wrenched, but his paw wouldn’t come free.

She was bewildered. This was new to her, and frightening. The thing that held him was hard like rock, but it was not like any rock she knew. To add to her bewilderment, it had sharp fangs that held the dark one fast. Small circles of the same hard material connected it to the short piece of wood. She tried to bite through but couldn’t.

The dark one renewed his efforts. He became near frantic. He snarled and screeched and leaped and pulled. She began to despair of ever freeing him when he threw himself up the bank and twisted his whole body, and suddenly his paw was free. Or half of it was. The rest stayed clamped in the hard teeth. He limped away and when she headed for the den he limped after her.

By the next morning the dark one’s leg was swollen and he could barely stand. A thick yellow pus oozed from the wound. He licked and licked, but it did his paw little good.

She thought she would lose him. For five sleeps he stayed on the ledge on his side. When she nosed him he didn’t move. His paw was a ruin. It was only half the size as before; only two claws were left. On the sixth day he sat up. She caught a grouse and shared it, but he ate little. She ambushed a fox and brought it back. The meat was stringy, but it was better than an empty stomach.

The dark one crawled to the stream. He drank and lowered his paw in and lay there the rest of the day. She stayed near, watching over him. When a pair of coyotes happened along, she chased them off.

That night the dark one limped back to the den. He slept until the sun was high in the sky the next day and limped down to the stream to drink and soak his paw. He did the same the day after. The pus stopped oozing and the swelling went down and he could move a little faster.

She killed a small doe and brought it to him. The dark one ate and then she ate and between them there wasn’t much left. The dark one slept some more. About the middle of the night she got up and went to the meadow and lay in wait until sunrise for deer to show, but none did. When she climbed back to the den, the dark one was gone.

The morning sun was warm, and she dozed. When it was straight overhead she rose and yawned and arched her back. The dark one still wasn’t back. She went to the stream, but he wasn’t there. She went to the meadow, but he wasn’t there. She roved wide, but found no trace of him.

That night she heard a grizzly roar and wolves howl and a lynx shriek, but she did not hear any of her own kind. She did not hear the dark one.

At daybreak she was on the move. No deer were at the meadow, so she ventured down the mountain to another. Half a dozen does were feeding. She got upwind and crept to within leaping range.

Suddenly the deer raised their heads and looked right at her. Or so she thought until a noise came from behind her. She was rising when there was a sharp pain in her side and she was jolted half around. For a few heartbeats she was rooted by the sight of a feathered shaft sticking out of her. Wheeling, she went to race off, but another pain shot through her and she pitched forward. The meadow and the sky changed places. She struggled to rise, but her front legs wouldn’t work.

Dimly, the female was aware of two-legged creatures with long black hair closing on her, and of their excited jabber. She raised her head and snarled at one and he held a bent limb and a feathered shaft toward her. A barbed tip was close to her eye. She tried to bite him.

A vast blackness consumed her.

Part Two

The Call of the Family

Chapter Four

The whites called them Sheepeater Indians because they ate a lot of mountain sheep. They also ate a lot of elk and deer and whatever else they could kill and forage, but the white name stuck.

They called themselves the Tukaduka. In the white tongue it meant “people of the high places.” They preferred the high parks and valleys to the flatlands and low valleys and seldom drifted down from the heights.

Other tribes considered them poor. They did not have horses. They did not have buffalo-hide lodges. They did not have white guns or white blankets or white pots and pans. They did not have white knives or white sewing needles or any of the other thousand and one things the whites had that the other tribes craved. But that was fine by the Tukaduka. They did not envy the whites their many goods. They did not desire to be rich as the other tribes saw rich to be.

To the Tukaduka, richness lay in the simple life. Getting along with others was valued more than all else, even white guns. Devotion to family meant more than white knives or sewing needles. Their families, the whites would say, were everything to them.

They did not live in villages. Each family had its own valley or park and dwelled in perfect contentment. It was true that at times they went hungry. It was true that the icy cold of winter was hard and sometimes cost lives. But they were happy, and to the Tukaduka being happy was the reason Coyote had brought them into the world.

War parties from other tribes left them alone. Counting coup on the Tukaduka, the other tribes believed, was as easy as plucking grass. It was insulting for a Piegan or a Blackfoot to boast of killing one. The Tukaduka were regarded as meek and weak as the sheep the whites named them after.

So the Sheepeaters lived quiet, simple lives, and went about their daily tasks at peace with the other tribes and the world around them.

Two Knives was a father of three. His family dwelled in a small valley watered by a gurgling stream high near the Divide. He had seen white men only twice. The first time it had been a party of trappers who stopped in the valley for the night. They were after beaver. Two Knives told them there were none in his valley, but they didn’t believe him until they had scoured the banks of the stream from one end of the valley to the other. One night two of them got drunk and tried to force themselves on Dove Sings. That angered Two Knives greatly. He was not big enough or strong enough to fight them, but fortunately another white man thought it wrong and stopped them.

The second time had been better. A lone white man with hair like snow stopped for a night. He shared his supper and was kind and smiling. Two Knives liked him a lot and could not understand why other Indians had given the white man the name Wolverine. The man had been as peaceful as the birds that Dove Sings was named after.

Much of what the white man said, Two Knives did not understand. The man had something called a “book,” which he recited with a flourish of his hands and arms. It amused Dove Sings greatly. Two Knives had been considerably surprised when Wolverine told him that the whites kept much of their learning and their wisdom in