the fire, the time you broke a finger when you fell from a tree, the time you sprained your ankle and it was so swollen you could hardly walk on it, and many more.”
“No son ever had a better mother.”
“Then why her over me?”
Evelyn had listened to the exchange in growing puzzlement. “Is something the matter?”
“All be fine,” Dega assured her.
“Why does Tihi look upset?”
“She not like me hurt.” To his mother Dega said, “It is not her over you. No one can ever take your place.”
“Yet you want her to dress your wound.” Tihi unfurled and sadly remarked, “Every mother knows this day will come. It is not a day we look forward to.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The day when another is as important as a mother in her son’s eyes, or more so.”
“I am your son. I will love you forever. Nothing can ever change that or come between us.”
“You will take a wife and enshrine her in your heart as you once enshrined me,” Tihi said. “It is the way of things. I have known this and thought I would accept the change, but it is harder than I expected.” She tenderly touched his head. “I do not like it, Son. I do not like it with all I am.”
Dega had never seen his mother this way. He was troubled, but he took it for granted she would accept his interest in Evelyn and be her normal self again. “She is my friend, Mother. What harm can it do?”
“She is more than that. Whether you admit it to yourself or not, I am second in your eyes now.” Bowing her head, Tihi moved off.
“What’s the matter with her?” Evelyn asked.
“She not happy we fight, we run.” Dega had told more lies in the past few moments than in all his life put together.
“We’re not done with either,” Evelyn predicted. She bent and carefully rubbed the crushed leaves into the gash. Dega winced but bore it stoically. “Now you lie here while I make some tea.”
“What good that be?”
“You’ll see.” Evelyn had brought her mother’s coffeepot. She didn’t think her mother would mind since her mother and father were away in St. Louis having her father’s rifle fixed. She filled it with water from the water skin and set it on the fire to heat. From her bundle she took pieces of dogwood bark and dropped them in the water. Then she went back to Dega. “It shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”
“You treat me nice.”
Evelyn almost said treating him nice came easy because she cared so much. Instead she said, “It’s what friends are for.”
Dega had more he yearned to say to her, but his tongue was oddly frozen. Coughing, he forced out, “You best friend me ever have.”
“I ever had.”
“Eh?”
“Your English. You wanted me to correct you, remember?”
“I sorry. I try so much, but white tongue hard.” Dega averted his face in shame.
“Don’t feel bad. A lot of Indians say the same. My mother speaks it so well because she has a knack for languages.”
“Blue Water Woman talk good, too.” Dega referred to the Flathead wife of Shakespeare McNair.
“She’s had decades of practice. Marry a white girl and stick with her twenty years and I bet you’ll speak English as good as Blue Water Woman.”
“Which white girl?” In Dega’s eyes there was only one.
“Oh, any will do,” Evelyn hedged, and just knew she was blushing. “I better check on the tea.” It wasn’t anywhere near done, but she opened the coffeepot and looked in and put the top back on. “The tea’s not boiling yet.”
Over at the horses, Waku was stripping a saddle. He glanced up as his wife joined him. “Did you hear? She makes tea for us. She is a good girl, that one.”
“She makes tea for our son,” Tihi corrected him. “He has cast me aside in favor of her.”
“What are you talking about? Degamawaku loves you as much as he ever has.”
“So he says. But my spirit is troubled, husband. When we get back to King Valley and our lodge, I must think long and hard and decide whether I like the change in him.”
“And if you do not?”
Tihikanima feigned an interest in the stars.
“I do not see why it bothers you so. Tell me. Would you feel the same if she was a full-blooded Shoshone?”
“I am not a bigot.”
“Then let it drop. Interfere and Dega will resent it. Besides, if they are truly in love, you can never drive them apart.”
“Never say never, husband,” Tihikanima said, and smiled.
Chapter Fifteen
The horse he had taken from the Sioux was about done in, but Logan didn’t care. He had deliberately ridden it near into the ground.
The distant glow of a campfire was why. He’d counted on Venom stopping for the night, and unless he missed his guess, the camp up ahead belonged to the bastard who shot him and the former friends who left him for dead.
Logan slowed his lathered mount and fingered the hilt of the knife. Earlier, he had come on the bodies of Rubicon and an Arapaho and out of spite cut off the black’s nose. A petty act, but an impulse he couldn’t resist. So what if Rubicon hadn’t been with them when Venom shot him?
A few hundred yards out, Logan drew rein and slid down. He let the reins dangle and advanced on foot, staying low to the ground so there was less chance of them spotting him.
Presently Logan flattened and crawled. His former pards had camped at the base of a knoll. He counted five forms around the fire. Two were missing. The Kyler twins, he soon deduced. He reckoned that Venom had sent them on ahead, which worked in his favor.
Logan was going to kill his former boss. Here and now was as good as any other time, but he needed a gun and they weren’t about to hand one to him. Staying well out in the dark, he studied on how to get one.
The five were eating. Jerky and coffee wasn’t much of a meal, but it was more than Logan had. His mouth watered and his stomach growled.
No one said much. Tibbet mentioned that he wished they were eating thick venison steaks or roast buffalo and Venom growled that they couldn’t risk shooting game because shots carried a long way.
Potter bit off a piece of jerky and asked with his mouth full, “Do you still think we’ll catch up to them tomorrow?”
“They can’t be that far ahead,” Venom said. “By noon at the latest we’ll have them.”
“Let’s hope the Kylers don’t lift their hair before we get there,” Tibbet remarked.
“They know better.”
“What about after?” Calvert asked. “Do we keep hunting scalps hereabouts or head elsewhere?”
Venom spat. “Do you even have to ask? As soon as we’re done with the girl and her friends, we’re heading for Texas. There’s plenty of bounty money to be made off Comanche scalps.”
“I’d rather hunt them than the Apaches,” Potter said. “Apaches aren’t quite human.”
“They pull their shirts on one sleeve at a time like the rest of us,” Venom said sourly.
“That’s about all we have in common. They can run all day under a hot sun without tiring, and we can’t. They
