Dega had been noting her every expression, and at the look on her face he said, “Evelyn?”
“Yes?”
“What you think about?”
“How to win?”
“Win?” Dega recalled that to win was the purpose of a game called checkers she had been trying to teach him.
“How to keep you and your family breathing. We have to make it cost the scalp hunters more than you are worth so they’ll give up and leave us be.” Evelyn gnawed her lower lip. “Either that, or we have to kill every last one of the buzzards.”
“Scalp men are birds?”
Evelyn laughed. She had to remember that he took her every word literally. “Not the way you mean, no. When a white says someone is a buzzard, it means they are no account.”
Dega tried to make sense of it. “Buzzard is same as vulture, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Vultures eat dead things. That what they do. That their…” Dega struggled for the right white word. “… purpose.” He beamed, pleased with himself.
“Yes, that’s true, too.”
“How that be bad?”
“It isn’t. It’s the nature of things.”
“Then how scalp hunters same as vultures?”
Evelyn wrestled with her wits to get it across. “A lot of whites don’t like buzzards. Same as they don’t like skunks. So when they don’t like someone, whites call that person a buzzard or a polecat.”
“Why whites no like vultures?”
“Because they eat carrion. Sorry, they eat the flesh of dead things.”
“But that what vultures do.”
“As you said, it’s their purpose, yes.”
Dega scrunched up his face in annoyance at his failure to understand. “So white people not like vulture to be vulture?”
“It’s the eating of dead things. The notion makes white people sick to their stomachs. Besides which, buzzards are ugly as sin.”
Dega was on the verge of a headache. Vultures couldn’t help doing what they did. It was their nature. As for being ugly, all living things were of Manitoa, each according to their own kind, and had a beauty in their own right. He’d always thought that a vulture in flight was a noble sight. Now Evelyn was saying whites thought vultures were ugly. “I be a poor white.”
“How’s that again?”
“Whites not think like Nansusequa. Whites think white. I try but not think same.”
“Well, of course, silly,” Evelyn said. “You have to be you. Just as I have to be me. That doesn’t mean we can’t have a meeting of the minds, now does it?”
Dega was ready to scream from confusion. She had just asked him a question and he had no idea what she had asked. She was right that he had to be him, but then, who else would he be? And she was right that she had to be her, but if she were someone else, she wouldn’t be Evelyn. And if he was him and she was her, how were their minds to meet? He pressed his palms to his temple.
“Something the matter?”
“My head hurt from too much think.”
“You try too hard. Things will come to you naturally if you let them. All in good time, as us whites like to say.”
Dega refused to give up. “How minds meet?”
“Oh. When two people who don’t see eye to eye work things out so they do see eye to eye, we call that a meeting of the minds.”
His despair mounting, Dega almost groaned out loud. Somehow they had gone from minds to eyes and back again. Here he wanted her to be proud of how well he talked, but again and again he became mired in confusion. Part of the problem was that he couldn’t grasp the nuances of the white tongue.
“Don’t look so glum. You’re doing fine. My pa says that when he first met my ma, they had to communicate by sign for the longest time. She picked up his tongue quick, but he had to work hard at learning Shoshone.”
The mention of sign caused Dega to glance at the Arapaho, who was staring sadly into the flames. Dega imagined he was thinking of the friends he had lost. Dega should feel sympathy, but he felt something else. “Think maybe I learn sign talk quick.”
“I’ll teach you if you want, but it might be better to stick with English until you get that down.”
Dega looked across the fire, into her eyes. “You like him?”
“Who?”
Dega nodded at the Arapaho.
“He’s nice enough,” Evelyn allowed. She remembered the look Dega had given her earlier, and her intuition flared. “Why do you ask? You’re not jealous, are you?”
“What be jealous?”
Evelyn hesitated. He might take it the wrong way. “Jealous is when you like someone and don’t want anyone else to like them.”
“No. I not jealous.” Dega wasn’t being honest. He had felt a twinge of…something…when she was signing to Plenty Elk. Something he never felt before, something raw and hot and disturbing.
“Oh.” Evelyn was disappointed.
Waku had been listening with keen interest without being obvious he was listening. His wife’s comments had kindled his curiosity. As near as he could make out, though, his son and Evelyn King did not act as he and Tihi did when they courted. If they were in love, they were hiding it, even from themselves. Yet there was no denying the looks they gave each other, usually when the other wasn’t looking. As he saw it, it would be a good while before they grew close enough to contemplate sharing the same lodge—his, or any other.
From out of the dark came a grunt.
Evelyn leaped to her feet with her Hawken in her hands. “That was a bear.” She hoped a black bear and not a grizzly. The latter was much more likely to attack.
Dega rose, too, and notched an arrow to his bow. “Fire keep bear away.”
“Not a griz. Not if it’s hungry enough.”
Everyone listened and waited in tense expectation. The grunt was repeated, only closer.
Turning, Evelyn saw a pair of glowing eyes. They were almost on a level with her own. “Don’t anyone do anything rash,” she whispered. “Dega, translate for your mother and sisters.”
Eager to please her, Dega did.
Little Miki edged over to Tihi and clasped her arm. “Mother?”
“Be still and it will go away.”
Plenty Elk stood and faced the bear. Raising his arms above his head, he let out with a loud screech.
Evelyn jerked the Hawken to her shoulder. She had her thumb on the hammer, ready to curl it back, but the bear wheeled and melted into the darkness with a parting snort. Forgetting herself, she said to the young warrior, “That was a darned fool stunt. You could have gotten us killed.”
Plenty Elk lowered his arms. ‘Question. What you speak?’
Leaning the Hawken against her leg, Evelyn signed, ‘You maybe make bear mad. Bear attack.’
‘Bear no like war cry. Bear always go.’
Not always, but Evelyn let it drop. She added chips to the fire so the flames blazed brighter, then scanned the night for glowing eyes. Only when she was convinced the monster had left did she sit back down, cross-legged, with the Hawken in her lap. She wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours now. “Stupid bear,” she muttered.
“Why people no be nice?” Dega asked.
Coming as it did out of the blue, the question mystified Evelyn. “Where did that come from?”
“Nice come from heart.”
“No, I mean, why did you ask?”
