so much.”
“Yes,” Raven On The Ground agreed. “They do.”
Chases Rabbits was having a bad moon. First it was the bear that tried to eat him. Now he had a worse problem. He was two days out from the mercantile and had at least three more of hard riding before he would reach King Valley. Suddenly he came to a crest dotted with firs and spotted a line of riders below. They were too far off for him to tell more than that they were warriors. He hoped they were Crows or maybe Shoshones, who were on good terms with his people. He hoped they weren’t Blackfeet or Piegans or Bloods, who would count coup on any Crow they came across.
As it turned out, they were something else. He was in the cover of the firs, watching the nine riders ascend, when the style of their hair and their faces sent a tingle of worry down his spine. They were Utes. They were far from their own land, and they were painted for war.
The Crows and the Utes weren’t at war with each other at the moment, but they weren’t friends, either. Chases Rabbits was glad they hadn’t spotted him. They would reach the crest a good arrow’s flight from where he was and go on their way none the wiser.
Then his pinto whinnied.
Immediately, several of the foremost Utes looked up, and one of them pointed at the shadows that concealed Chases Rabbits, yipping in the Ute tongue.
Chases Rabbits wheeled his pinto and fled. Should they catch him, there was no doubt what they would do: the same as Crows would do to captured Utes. He would be mutilated to test his manhood and then slain.
Whoops rose in a chorus and hooves pounded hard. The war party was after him.
Chases Rabbits fought down panic. His pinto was fast, but their horses could be faster. His capture seemed inevitable.
He flew down the other side, reining right and left to avoid trees and boulders and vaulting logs. He tried to calm himself so he could think clearly, but his heart hammered in his chest and his blood pulsed madly in his veins.
Chases Rabbits glanced over his shoulder. The Utes hadn’t appeared yet. He swept around a spruce and into a stand of alder. To his left down a short slope grew a dense thicket of chokecherries. The instant he spotted it, he reined down and in, his pinto crashing through the tangle with ease. When he had gone as far as he could throw a rock, he came upon a clear spot, drew rein, and jumped down. He could hear the Utes, but he couldn’t see them yet.
Quickly, Chases Rabbits grabbed the rope bridle and pulled while putting his foot against the pinto’s front leg and pushing. Quite a few moons ago, he had witnessed Nate King use the trick with his horse, and he had been trying to teach the pinto. Sometimes it cooperated. Sometimes it didn’t.
Right now it didn’t.
“Down!” Chases Rabbits urged, and pulled and pushed harder. The pinto balked.
Above them, the forest crashed with the sound of the onrush of warriors out for his blood.
“Down!” Chases Rabbits pleaded, and practically hung from the bridle by both hands. The pinto tucked at the knees. He pulled with all his might, and to his elation, the pinto lowered onto its side. He flung himself on top of it, his shoulders and head on its neck, and wrapped his fingers around its muzzle to keep it from whinnying.
Yipping and screeching, the Utes swept out of the trees and hurtled down the mountain. They passed so close that Chases Rabbits could have brought one down with his bow. Any moment he expected to be spotted. Then they were past and the forest swallowed them, and he released the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
Not until the hoofbeats faded to welcome silence did Chases Rabbits rise and pull the pinto erect. Swiftly mounting, he resumed his ride, only with more care. It wasn’t unheard of for war parties to split up when in enemy territory to be less conspicuous.
Where there were nine Utes, there might be more.
Chapter Fourteen
Raven On The Ground was confused and more than a little worried.
Chases Rabbits had told her that the whites wanted women to cook and sew and mend for them. In return, they would be allowed to have things from the trading post. She and her companions had been at the post living in the awful wood lodge for several days now and they’d hardly had to do anything. She kept asking Dryfus what they were to do. He would go to Geist, then come back and say that they should be patient and enjoy themselves, and all would be made clear soon. But there was nothing to do but talk and walk. They were tired of talking and had walked all over Mud Hollow without seeing anything worth their interest.
That evening the women held a council.
“I am for going back to our village,” Flute Girl announced.
“I as well,” Lavender said. “We waste our time here. The whites sent for us but they don’t need us.”
“They are puzzling people,” Spotted Fawn remarked.
“They are as different from the Apsaalooke as dirt is from water,” Flute Girl said.
“In the morning I will ask Dryfus one more time what it is the whites wish us to do,” Raven On The Ground said. “If they do not have work for us, we will leave.”
“Maybe you should not go to him,” Lavender said.
“He is the only one who knows sign.”
“But he will just go to the one they call Geist, and Geist will say what he always says. Relax and enjoy ourselves.”
“What else, then?” Raven On The Ground asked.
“Go to the one they call Toad,” Lavender suggested. “He is their leader, is he not?”
“Chases Rabbits did say that Toad is their chief, yes,” Raven On The Ground confirmed.
“Yet not once has he to come to talk to us,” Spotted Fawn said. “He is not a polite host.”
“He is white,” Flute Girl said.
“Maybe he will give us work if we ask him face-to-face,” Lavender said.
It was worth a try, they all decided. Raven On The Ground would speak for them, as she had been doing.
So the next morning, shortly after the trading post opened and while there were yet few people, Raven On The Ground made sure her dress was clean and her hair was perfectly done in two braids. Then she went into the post to present herself to the white chief. Two of the others—Gratt and Berber, she believed their names to be— noticed her but went on about their business.
Raven On The Ground looked for Geist and Dryfus but didn’t see them, which was good, as she had grown concerned about them. It was their eyes. Something she saw in them, something she could not quite define, bothered her. She did not see it all the time. Usually when they thought she wasn’t looking at them, she’d catch an unguarded expression, the kind of expression that hinted at a hunger which had nothing to do with food.
Toad was behind the counter, as he nearly always was. She rarely saw him come out from behind it. The first day she had gone up to it to thank him for inviting them, and he had moved to the other end without saying a word to her. She had thought it terribly rude. But then she had reminded herself that he was a chief and she had not approached him through one of the whites under him, as she should.
This time she would do it directly. She marched up to the counter and calmly stood with her hands folded, waiting.
Toad had a fabulous stick in his hand that left black squiggly lines on flat white squares of paper bound together somehow. He glanced up and blinked as if he were surprised. “Good morning.”
Raven On The Ground had heard those words before, from Grizzly Killer. She did not know what they meant, but she repeated them and went on smiling.
Toad put down the fabulous stick. “I didn’t know any of you spoke English.”
His sounds were alien to Raven On The Ground except for the last sound, “English.” She knew that it referred
