close. He considered whether to stalk him and kill him anyway.
Then a horse nickered and stamped.
The Outcast had forgotten about the horses. His back was to the corral, and whirling, he saw that a sorrel had its head high and its ears pricked and was looking right at him. He had been careless. He figured the breed would investigate. Staying low, he ran toward the trees, but he went only a short way and dived flat. Hidden in the veil of darkness, he waited. But the breed still did not appear.
Puzzled, the Outcast crawled in a wide loop. Finally he spotted a silhouette at the water’s edge. The breed was pacing back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back. The Outcast was surprised to hear him muttering to himself. Men should not mutter. Women, yes, but not warriors. He reminded himself that whites were not warriors and this breed was half white.
The breed was so engrossed, it would be easy to crawl close and slay him. The Outcast was tempted. Then the rectangle of wood opened again and out came the young woman. She crossed to the breed and quietly addressed him.
The Outcast wanted to see their expressions. He could tell more if he could see their faces. He had to gauge their feelings by the way they said their words. The young woman said them sadly. The breed responded angrily. Suddenly the young woman cried out, threw her arms wide, and embraced him, sobbing. He embraced her, and for a long while they stood still and were silent save for the young woman’s sniffling.
Again the Outcast felt that strange constriction in his throat. It troubled him. He watched, and wondered why he did not rise up and rush them. He would be on them before they realized he was there. Two strokes of his blade and the deeds would be done. But he didn’t rise. He stayed flat on the ground.
The pair moved slowly toward their lodge. They exchanged a few soft words. The breed dabbed at the young woman’s face with his sleeve, and she laughed.
The Outcast remembered how another woman, in another time, once laughed as merrily, and his insides churned.
The rasp of the wood flap closing brought the Outcast out of himself. The pair were back inside.
The Outcast frowned and made for the woods. When he came to the pinto, he climbed on and rode around the west end of the lake, past a dark, quiet lodge.
The south shore was bordered by the grassy valley. There was no cover except the grass, but that was enough for the Outcast. He left the pinto in the trees and crawled toward the other lodge with glowing glass. Once again he reached the lodge without being detected. Once again he put his eye to a corner of the glass. Inside was the old white man with hair the color of snow, and one other. That it was a woman did not surprise him; that she was an Indian, did.
At first the Outcast took her for a Nez Perce, but as he studied her features and her hair and her dress, he changed his mind. She was a Flathead. His tribe had had few dealings with them, and those they had were always at the point of a lance or a knife. He guessed that she had seen at least fifty winters, but he never had been good at judging the age of women. This one was uncommonly attractive and possessed a grace and dignity that impressed him.
The Outcast wondered if the white man had bought her. That happened sometimes among other tribes. The Crows, he had heard, made a habit of it. But then the Crows had their minds in a whirl. It was said that women ruled their tribe, which had made the men of his own tribe laugh. It was also claimed that Crow men used the women in common and that the Crows took their women by stealing them, which made no sense. Why steal a woman if you were going to let other men have her? Maybe it wasn’t true. Rumors about other tribes were not always based on fact.
The white hair moved out of sight of the window, and the Outcast tensed, thinking he was coming outside. But no, the man reappeared holding something the Outcast had never seen before. He did not know what to make of it. It was square, and consisted of many white sheets with blacks marks on them. The white man opened it and then began talking in a loud voice, with much gesturing.
The woman rolled her eyes. She sat in a marvelous thing that rocked back and forth. She was using long metal needles to weave a garment. She said something that caused the old man’s cheeks to grow red.
Then both of them grinned.
The Outcast realized they were very much in love, these two. He remembered the time he had been in love, and was mad at himself.
He had seen enough.
The Outcast ducked down and left. Apparently there were only the two men and the two women in the entire valley. Whoever lived in the other lodges must be gone, or the lodges would be aglow with light.
The Outcast had gone a short way toward the trees when there was a tremendous splash in the lake. He looked, imagining it was a fish, but whatever it was had gone back under, leaving ripples.
Once on the pinto, the Outcast reined to the west. He would spend the night deep in the timber. He must get plenty of sleep. Although he had been banished from his tribe, he had not stopped being a warrior. He still counted coup.
And he had new enemies to slay.
Chapter Four
They came out of the heart of the darkness. There were seven of them—short, stocky warriors as different from other mountain and plains tribes as the night from the day.
Their buckskins were crude and lacked whangs. The sleeves flared from the elbows to the wrists, and on the right hip of each legging were three concentric circles painted in black. They carried ash bows and had quivers filled with arrows fletched with raven feathers. The hilts of their knives were carved from antlers, and the blades were iron.
Most remarkable of all were their faces: low foreheads, thick eyebrows, eyes like black pitch, jutting jaws, and scars. Scars in intricate patterns that covered every inch of skin on their face, deep scars that formed symbols. What they stood for, only the short men could say.
The men moved at night and laid up during the day. Less chance of being seen that way.
They were a secretive people. Bitter experience taught them the need for it. Once they lived far to the south along a great bay. Life had been good. They hunted and fished and ate the hearts of their enemies, as their forefathers had done for more winters than there were blades of grass.
Then a new tribe came. A large tribe in the thousands, compared to their paltry hundreds. The warriors rode on fleet, giant dogs, which the Tunkua later learned were called horses, and did not like having their hearts eaten. They made fierce war on the Tunkua, or Heart Eaters, as they called themselves, and it became apparent that unless the Heart Eaters fled, they would be wiped out.
Councils were held. They could not go south. There was nothing but water. They had canoes, but only a few, and they always stayed close to shore. They were not a seafaring people.
They could not go east. That way lay vast swamps and bayous infested with alligators and snakes.
The west did not appeal to them. The land was dry and hot, much of it desert, and claimed by a tribe they held in great dread, the Shis-Inday.
The only way, then, was for the Heart Eaters to go north. They packed their possessions on travois drawn by dogs, and in the dead of night left the land they loved, bound for the unknown. They crossed a near-endless prairie of waving grass. The plain did not suit them, so they turned to the northwest, and after countless sleeps came to towering mountains capped by snow.
The Heart Eaters marveled. They had never seen mountains so high. They explored and were amazed to discover that while a few tribes had laid claim to territory here and there, much of the mountains belonged to no
