The woman stopped singing. He heard her moving around, and then she was beside him. He felt the cool touch of a wet cloth on his skin as she wiped his face with it. He thought he might as well go ahead and take a chance.
He opened his eyes.
The woman drew back with a little gasp when she saw that he was awake. In her own tongue, she said, “He lives.”
“I do live,” Preacher replied in the same language, which he had recognized instantly as Crow. He was fluent in the lingo. “Thanks to you.”
The woman shook her head. She was young, probably no more than twenty summers, and had a round, pretty face, with dark eyes and hair as black as a raven’s wing, slick with bear grease, parted in the center and pulled into braids on each side of her head.
“You live because of Crazy Bear,” she told Preacher. “He is the one who brought you here.”
“You bound up my wounds?”
She nodded. “Yes, after packing them with moss and herbs that will heal them.”
“Then I owe you a debt of gratitude as well. How are you called?”
The woman hesitated, then said, “Bright Leaf.”
“Thank you, Bright Leaf. I am called Preacher.”
She leaned back again. Her breath hissed between her teeth. “Ghost-Killer,” she whispered. He saw fright in her big, dark eyes.
Preacher shook his head, wanting to reassure her even though the movement made his surroundings spin madly around him for a few seconds. “That is one of the names the Blackfeet know me by,” he said. “But I have never been an enemy to the Crow.”
Early in his career as a mountain man, he had mastered the art of slipping undetected into a village and cutting the throats of some of the warriors, then getting out again without anyone knowing he had been there until the bodies were discovered the next morning. That demoralized his enemies and made them regard him with the respect they would give a supernatural creature. Many of the tribes already thought he was special because the story had spread about how he had talked all day and all night to save himself from being burned at the stake. That incident had given him the name of Preacher.
Despite his words, Bright Leaf scooted away from him and then stood up, backing away around the fire ring in the center of the tepee. “I will go and tell Crazy Bear that you have returned to life,” she said. “Stay there. Rest.”
Preacher sighed. There wasn’t much else he could do except follow her orders, because right now he felt as weak as a newborn kitten. Even if he could make it to his feet, he doubted if he could walk across the tepee, let alone go outside and wander off.
“I will stay,” he told Bright Leaf.
She nodded, then bent over and pushed aside the flap of hide that covered the tepee’s entrance. Preacher was able to look outside for a second. He saw darkness, edged with the flickering glare of a fire. Night had fallen, and since it had been the middle of the afternoon when he was shot, that meant he had been unconscious for several hours, at the very least.
A tide of weariness washed over him. He lay there struggling to keep his eyes open. He knew that if he closed them, he would probably fall asleep. He wanted to stay awake until Crazy Bear got here, so he could talk to the man.
Luckily, Crazy Bear must have been close by, because only a couple of minutes passed before the hide flap was swept aside again, this time by a muscular arm as big around as the trunk of a small tree. The warrior who came into the tepee had to stoop low to make it through the entrance. When he straightened to his full height, he had to stand near the center of the tepee, otherwise his head would have poked against the sloping hide wall.
In the glow of the fire, he didn’t seem quite as ugly as he had in broad daylight. It softened the harsh planes and angles of his face, made the scars less noticeable, and the broken, crooked lump of a nose didn’t dominate his features quite as much. He still looked like the sort of figure that a mother might describe to her children and then threaten them with to get them to behave.
Bright Leaf came into the tepee behind the man and peeked timidly around his massive form at Preacher.
The Crow warrior regarded Preacher impassively for a moment and then said, “Bright Leaf tells me you are the one called Ghost-Killer.”
“This is true,” Preacher said, then continued, “But as I told her, the Crow are not my enemies.”
He could have been wrong, but he thought for a second that he saw a smile play over the man’s twisted lips.
“This is good. Our village will not have to fear you.”
“Nope,” Preacher agreed. “You got nothin’ to fear from me. I’m plumb friendly.”
The warrior hunkered on his heels beside the fire. “I am called Crazy Bear. I lead this band of my people.”
So he was a chief, Preacher thought. That wasn’t surprising, considering the elaborate decorations on his buckskins and the beads tied into the braids in which he wore his hair.
“Thank you for saving my life.”
“I did not save your life,” Crazy Bear said. “The Ghost-Killer cannot die.”
“You saw how much blood I lost, Crazy Bear. If you hadn’t helped me, I would have died. Believe me. But even before I could bleed to death, those men would have killed me. Thank you for stopping them.” Preacher paused. “I suppose it
This time the massive Indian definitely smiled. “You call the laugh of Crazy Bear terrible?” Then he folded his
