Claire stomps a few steps to show her amusement, then laughs. “Bee could probably have the baby and shoot bad guys at the same time.”
“What a picture that would be!” Willa responds. She sees Claire’s father, Jeff, and waves to let him know she needs him. “Run along, Claire, and don’t leave camp. Okay?”
The girl makes a face, but races off anyway. She veers sharply in the direction of the new mother’s shed, so Willa would guess that Ellie will soon have to fend off dirty fingers grabbing at the babies.
When she reaches Jeff, she says, “She really needs a bath, you know. She smells like a zoo.” They both know who Willa is talking about.
He rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, I know. She says bathing makes her stink like a human and that makes it hard to hunt.”
“Good grief.”
“Exactly,” he says with a sigh, then shakes off the topic. “What’s up?”
“The small group of men that helped us with the battle have been sighted sending members into the field below the cliff. How sure are we that they really did help?”
Jeff sounds certain when he answers. “Oh, very sure. After it was over, three guys went with me to check the damages back on the trail. They killed more of them than we did. Different arrows. One came out and asked to retrieve them. We said sure, but they still waited for us to clear the area. I don’t think they did that because they were afraid. I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to encroach on your space.”
“Then why encroach now?”
“Maybe they aren’t encroaching. Maybe they’re trying to get an introduction.” He shrugs and says, “It’s not like we make it easy to meet the neighbors.”
Nodding at a few people near the fire tending weapons, she remains silent until they pass the group, then asks, “Do you think we should send a…I don’t know…an emissary? A group? Something like that anyway. You know, to make contact in a friendly way.”
He shrugs again, clearly not entirely comfortable with the idea. “We’ve discussed this a couple of times now, and it could go either way. They could make friendly for a while, but turn out to be biding their time. We have no way to know what they’ll do. It’s a risk, no matter what we do.”
“And if we don’t take the risk, our group will never get much bigger. We won’t have the territory we need for hunting on a long-term basis either,” Willa says.
“That too,” Jeff agrees.
“I wish Beau were here. He would know what to do.”
Jeff stops and touches her arm. “No. I mean, yes, I miss Beau too. What I mean is that you’ll figure out what to do even without him here. He wasn’t magically all-knowing. He figured things out as he went along, just like we do.”
Patting the hand he has on her arm, Willa smiles. “You’re such a good guy, Jeff.”
He pulls his hand away and grins. “I like to think so.”
With a smirk and a wink, Willa asks, “So how did you wind up with such a wild daughter?”
That makes him laugh.
*****
A few mornings later, as Willa frowns into the cup of herbal tea that will never be a match for those long-ago cups of morning coffee, a scout comes racing up the path and directly for her. It’s one of Bee’s scouts, Sarah. She’s not even winded when she skids to a halt just outside the fire ring.
“Willa, there’s something you should see,” she says, then points down the rough trail leading to the far end of their watch territory. “I’m not sure what it means, but I think…umm, I’m not sure what I think.”
Sarah isn’t one to trail off like that. She isn’t one to be indecisive either. Bee has trained her well, as she has all the scouts. With two dark streaks of boiled mud painted across Sarah’s cheeks, which help to break up the pattern of her face while on watch, it’s hard for Willa to read her expression.
What she can’t see is any alarm in Sarah’s expression. That’s the important part.
Setting down her cup of inadequate morning tea, Willa says, “Why don’t you just tell me what happened.”
“Okay,” Sarah nods, then glances quickly back down the trail once more. “Okay, there’s a deer about a hundred yards from the last daylight watch post. It has flowers all over it and a note.”
Willa shakes her head quickly. “What?”
“There’s a deer—”
Holding up a hand, Willa stops the flow of Sarah’s words. “No, I heard you. I just don’t understand.”
With a shrug, Sarah says, “We don’t either, which is why I’m here.”
“And it’s just a deer? A dead deer?”
“Yep,” Sarah says, obviously relieved to have something to say that isn’t uncertain.
Glancing down the trail, Willa considers the options. Their daylight watches extend further than their night watches. They don’t want to become predictable, so there’s a complex series of rotations involved in placing the night watches.
The wide vistas they can see in the daylight from the furthest point on the trail are neutralized by the deep shadows of night. Plus, the path to that point is dangerous in the dark. Bears traffic that area as they head for water.
So, that means whoever left the deer not only understood no one would be there at night, but also knew someone would be there soon after daylight to find the deer before it rotted and attracted scavengers. That could be bad, but again, why leave it there and expose how much they knew of the tribe if their motives were bad?
“Who’s down there now?” Willa asks.
“I left Donna down at the watch station, but Claire walked us down, so she’s there too. There’s no one around. No one waiting or hiding. We scanned the whole area. It’s just the deer.”
Standing, Willa looks around to see who else is up and awake. It’s very early, just past daybreak. Usually, it’s just her and whoever is getting ready to man the daylight
