She matched his grin, eyes sparkling. They were celebrating the conclusion of her first woman’s flux. In the white culture Butler had come from, even hinting at a woman’s monthly discharge was forbidden. Here, among the Dukurika, the event was cause for feasting. During her ten-day isolation from the community, Mountain Flicker had been instructed on a woman’s duties by Red Rain and Flowering Sage. At the end of Mountain Flicker’s passage into womanhood Red Rain had painted her face, and the part down the center of her scalp, in crimson, which marked her as an adult.
Butler thought Mountain Flicker was an enchanting girl. Her partly white ancestry—going back to her grandfather, a trapper named Travis Hartman—had given her a perfectly proportioned face, wide cheeks, and straight nose. Tonight she wore her long black hair loose, and it hung down over her shoulders to pile on the buffalo robes behind her.
Butler made the hand sign for “Are you doing well?”
“Ha’a,” she called back. “It’s good to get out of the women’s lodge.”
He wasn’t sure what to make of their relationship. He’d never really been close to a girl before. And Lord knew, they’d had a lot of fun together. More like they’d been best friends. And she’d never flinched on those days when Pettigrew, Baker, Peterson and the rest of his men were being pesky.
Red Rain and Cracked Bone Thrower had watched, but said nothing. For Butler, however, his attraction brought unease. Mountain Flicker was sixteen, but her supple young body was fully female with muscular legs, rounded hips and flat belly, broad shoulders and full breasts. She moved with a fluid grace, and he loved to watch her dance, her body undulating as her feet flew. When she did, her hair would catch the sun and shine, swishing behind her like a liquid wave that washed down almost to her knees.
Sometimes he couldn’t help but think of Water Ghost Woman, and the desire that Mountain Flicker aroused, unbidden, within him.
But then the Dukurika were anything but chaste. To Butler’s initial dismay, carnal relations between a man and wife were considered a natural behavior as unremarkable as eating and sleeping. The first time he had heard Red Rain and Cracked Bone Thrower connubially joined under the robes had shocked him. Red Rain made sounds of delight deep in her throat that ended in little yips of pleasure when she reached her paroxysm. Or a whole string of them if Cracked Bone Thrower was on his game. One thing was sure: pelvic congestion wasn’t on Red Rain’s list of concerns.
No sooner had Butler come to terms with his own physical reaction to the goings-on, than he’d been abashed to find himself dreaming of Mountain Flicker in that way.
To his further dismay, it had become a major topic of conversation among his men.
Mountain Flicker had come to Cracked Bone Thrower’s lodge with the intention of marrying him. Among the Dukurika, Butler had learned, it was actually expected that when a man took a second wife, it should be his wife’s sister.
And now Mountain Flicker was officially a woman.
Which meant that, inevitably, Butler would have to listen to his friend and this sparkling young woman he so adored make those sounds. Do what he more and more longed to do himself.
The blizzard made a howling out beyond the lodge, another twist of snowflakes pushing their way past the smoke hole to vanish in the heat.
“I am very happy for you,” Butler told her, allowing his soul to ache a bit as he stared into her eyes. And he would be happy. Cracked Bone Thrower had become his friend. Red Rain and Mountain Flicker had made him part of their little family group. Accorded him every respect after hearing of his Underworld adventures with Water Ghost Woman. No matter how he had come to obsess over Mountain Flicker, he would force himself to be joyful when she and Cracked Bone Thrower married.
Might even be tonight.
“And how will y’all deal with that?” Kershaw’s thick drawl asked behind Butler’s ear.
“I will do my duty, Sergeant,” he said crisply. Damn it, it was a measure of his disquiet that Kershaw had come. The Cajun only spoke when Butler’s turmoil was roiling.
“Reckon, Cap’n, yer gone on the girl.”
“I will acquit myself as a gentleman, Sergeant. I am delighted for my friends, delighted for Mountain Flicker.” And before Kershaw could goad him again, he ordered, “That will be all, Sergeant.”
Cracked Bone Thrower, Mountain Flicker, and Red Rain were watching him with knowing eyes.
“What was the dead man saying?” Cracked Bone Thrower asked. “The sergeant only comes when you are unhappy or worried.”
Butler smiled wearily. “You know him too well. I was just telling him that I am happy for Mountain Flicker, and how her life will be changing.”
He could sense the sudden tension. Even among the little boys. They were all looking at him expectantly.
“Yes”—Cracked Bone Thrower thoughtfully set aside his plate of meat—“Flicker is now a woman. It is time that she took a man. Her father is not around to speak for her. So she has come to me. She would have you for as long as you would keep her.”
Butler stopped short, as if he had imagined the words coming out of Cracked Bone Thrower’s mouth. “I thought she was to marry you.”
“I will gladly take her for my second wife if you don’t want her, Butler. We are naatea, family. You have come among us, shown us honor and respect. Red Rain and I have watched you with Flicker. We have seen your attraction, how you look at her with fond longing. And she has told us she would be your wife.”
Butler, his heart still pounding, turned to her. “You would be my wife?”
“The word is gwee. Say it.” Flicker seemed unusually
