chip at one edge.
The girl was facing away, her unseen face bent toward the hand that held the hem as she inspected the tear.
In making the inspection, the dress had been lifted high enough to expose the girl’s short, skinny legs.
A woman’s voice suddenly called from outside the room.
“Christine . . .”
The girl’s head turned, and in a rush of realization, Stands With A Fist recognized her old self. Her old face listened, and then the old mouth made the words: “Coming, Mother.”
Stands With A Fist opened her eyes then. She was frightened by what she had seen, but like a listener at the feet of a storyteller, she wanted more.
She closed her eyes again, and from the limb of an old oak tree a scene opened through a mass of rustling leaves. A long-fronted sod house, shaded by a pair of cottonwoods, was built against the bank of a draw. A crude table thrown together with planking sat in front of the house. And seated at the table were four grown-up people, two men and two women. The four were talking, and Stands With A Fist could understand every word.
Three children were playing blindman’s bluff farther out in the yard, and the women kept an eye on them as they chatted about a fever one of the children had recently conquered.
The men were smoking pipes. On the table in front of them were scattered the remains of a late afternoon Sunday lunch: a bowl of boiled potatoes, several dishes of greens, a pile of cornless cobs, a turkey skeleton, and a half-full pitcher of milk. The men were talking about the likelihood of rain.
She recognized one of them. He was tall and stringy. His cheeks were hollow and high-boned. His hair was pushed straight back over his head. A short, wispy beard clung to his jaw. It was her father.
Up above she could make out the forms of two people lying in the buffalo grass growing out of the roof. At first she didn’t know who they were, but suddenly she was closer and could see them clearly.
She was with a boy about her age. His name was Willy. He was raw and skinny and pale. They were side by side on their backs, holding hands as they watched a line of high clouds spreading across the spectacular sky.
They were talking about the day they would be married.
“I would rather there was nobody,” Christine said dreamily. “I would rather you came to the window one night and took me away.”
She squeezed his hand, but Willy didn’t squeeze back. He was watching the clouds intently.
“I don’t know about that part,” he said.
“What don’t you know?”
“We could get in trouble.”
“From who?” she asked impatiently.
“From our parents.”
Christine turned her face to his and smiled at the concern she saw.
“But we’d be married. Our business would be our own, not someone else’s.”
“I suppose,” he said, his brow still knitted.
He didn’t offer anything more, and Christine went back to watching the sky with him.
At length the boy sighed. He looked at her from the corner of his eye, and she at him.
“I guess I don’t care what kind of fuss there is . . . so long as we get married.”
“I don’t either,” she said.
Without embracing, their faces were suddenly moving toward one another, their lips making ready for a kiss. Christine changed her mind at the last moment.
“We can’t,” she whispered.
Hurt passed across his eyes.
“They’ll see us,” she whispered again. “Let’s scoot down.”
Willy was smiling as he watched her slide a little farther down the back side of the roof. Before he went after her he threw a backward glance at the people in the yard below.
Indians were coming in from the prairie. There were a dozen of them, all on horseback. Their hair was roached and their faces were painted black.
“Christine.” he hushed, grabbing her.
They squirmed forward on their bellies, edging close for the best possible view. Willy pulled up his squirrel gun as they craned their necks.
The women and children must have gone inside already, for her father and his friend were alone in the yard. Three Indians had come all the way up. The others were waiting at a respectful distance.
Christine’s father began to talk in signs to one of the three emissaries, a big Pawnee with a scowl on his face. She could see right away the talk was not good. The Indian kept motioning toward the house, making the sign for drinking. Christine’s father kept shaking his head in denial.
Indians had come before, and Christine’s father had always shared what he had on hand. These Pawnee wanted something he didn’t have . . . or something he wouldn’t part with.
Willy whispered in her ear.
“They look sore. . . . Maybe they want whiskey.”
That might be it, she thought. Her father didn’t approve of strong drink in any form, and as she watched, she could see he was losing patience. And patience was one of his hallmarks.
He waved them off, but they didn’t move. Then he threw his hands into the air, and the ponies tossed their heads. Still the Indians did not move, and now all three were scowling,
Christine’s father said something to the white friend standing by his side and showing their backs, they turned for the house.
There was no time for anyone to yell a warning. The big Pawnee’s hatchet was on a downward arc before Christine’s father had fully turned away. It struck deep under his shoulder, driving the length of the blade. He grunted as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him and hopped sideways across the yard. Before he’d gone even a few steps, the big Pawnee was on his back, hacking furiously as he drove him to ground.
The other white man tried to run, but singing arrows knocked him down halfway to the door of the sod house.
Terrible sounds flooded Christine’s ears. Screams of despair were coming from inside the house, and the Indians who had held back were whooping madly as they dashed forward at a gallop. Someone was roaring in her face. It was Willy.
“Run, Christine . . . run!”
Willy planted one of his boots on her behind and sent the girl rolling down to the spot where the roof ended and the prairie began. She looked back and saw the raw, skinny boy standing on the edge of the roof, his squirrel gun pointed down at the yard. It fired, and for a moment Willy stood motionless. Then he turned the rifle around, held it like a club, jumped quietly into space, and disappeared.
She ran then, wild with fear, her skinny seven-year-old legs churning up the draw behind the house like the wheels of a machine.
The sun was slanting into her eyes and she fell several times, scraping the skin off her knees. But she was up in a wink each time, the fear of dying pushing her past pain. If a brick wall had suddenly sprung up in the draw, she would have run right into it.
She knew she couldn’t keep this pace, and even if she could, they would be coming on horseback, so as the draw began to curve and its banks grew steeper, she looked for a place to hide.
Her frantic search had yielded nothing and the pain in her lungs was starting to stab when she spotted a dark opening partially obscured by a thick growth of bunchgrass halfway up the slope on her left.
Grunting and crying, she scrambled up the rock-strewn embankment and, like a mouse diving for cover, threw herself into the hole. Her head went in, but her shoulders didn’t. It was too small. She rocked back onto her knees and banged at the sides of the hole with her fists. The earth was soft. It began to fall away. Christine dug deliriously, and after a few moments there was enough room to wriggle inside.
It was a very tight fit. She was curled in a fetal ball and, almost at once, had the sickening feeling that she had somehow stuffed herself into a jar. Her right eye could see over the lip of the hole’s entrance for several hundred yards down the draw. No one was coming. But black smoke was rising from the direction of the house. Her hands were drawn up against her throat and one of them discovered the miniature crucifix she’d worn ever since
