this.”
“Time’s not on our side,” he said. “I’ll probably stop bleeding, but we’ve got to find some food. I saw juniper by the stream. And some dandelions, but that’s not gonna do much for us. We’ve got to get to them soon, while we still have some strength left.”
“Do you think they’re at the cabin?”
“Probably. Our only chance is to try to sneak up on them. We should wait until nightfall.”
“What, try to go back there in the dark? They’ll have lights.”
“Exactly,” he said. “That’ll be our only advantage. If it’s like last night, there’ll be enough moonlight for us to see everything we need to. If they have flashlights, their eyes will never get adjusted to the dark.”
“Okay,” I said. “We take our shot at ’em. We do it tonight.”
“Look at that sky,” he said. Through the branches we could see another blazing sunset. It looked just like the sky from the night before, but of course everything was different now. The whole world had tipped upside down.
“Last night,” he said, “I was thinking to myself, that’s Tom’s sky, the ‘Pleasing Sky,’ the sun going down in the west. I thought it was a good omen.”
He closed his eyes and kept them closed for a long time. His breathing grew ragged.
“Vinnie, are you all right?”
“Our grandmother used to tell us these stories,” he said. “These stories about our ancestors, all the things they did, the ceremonies, the medicines. Here’s Tom and me, growing up in this house on the reservation, going to the public school. We didn’t know anything about this stuff. But our grandmother, she made sure we learned our real history. She made us promise we’d remember it and tell it to our own children.”
He stopped for a moment to wipe his eyes with one hand. He kept the other hand held tight against his face. The blood was drying on his fingers.
“You don’t go to war for land, or for power. You go to war to avenge your brother’s death. You gather your warriors, you gather your medicines. You make a war pole, you do your war dance. You sing the war song. I don’t remember how the song goes, but there’s one part that always stuck with me. Something about looking up at the sky and seeing the red, and knowing that someone would die. ‘Blood is the sky.’ That’s the line I remember ‘Blood is the sky.’”
He dipped one finger into the dirt and rubbed a streak across each cheek. “You paint your face with black,” he said. He dipped his finger in the dirt again, leaned over close and put a streak on each of my cheeks, as well.
He took some of his own blood and rubbed another streak on each cheek, above the black. “And red,” he said. He took more blood and rubbed it on my face.
“Then you’re ready,” he said. “You’re ready to go to war.”
Chapter Fifteen
We waited for the sun to go down. The darkness seemed to creep in all around us until we were totally swallowed by it. Under our little overhang with the dead tree covering us, the darkness made me realize how alone we were, how far away we were from anyone who could help us.
We kept close together, trying to stay warm. As I shivered I could feel the last gallon in my tank burning away to nothing. Without food or shelter, I didn’t see how I could live to see another night.
“How are your eyes?” Vinnie finally said.
“What do you mean?”
“Look out at the trees. Can you see them?”
“Not very well.”
“Use the sides of your eyes,” he said. “You have better night vision if you don’t look at things directly. Try it.”
I picked a tree, tried to look away and still be aware of it. “All right, I think I see what you mean.”
“Okay, good. Are you ready to go?”
“Of course.” I said it like I actually believed it.
Standing up was an ordeal. We had just spent the last few hours sitting on the cold ground, leaning against the rocks. It took me a full minute to straighten out my back. Vinnie had to keep his head down even longer than that to keep from passing out. When we were both finally on our feet, there was enough moonlight for us to see each other’s faces. The war stripes on our cheeks were like a cruel joke.
“Do you remember the way back to the cabin?” I said.
“I think so. Back to the stream, and then we can work our way back to the trail.”
“What if they’re out looking for us?”
“They won’t be, not unless they have flashlights. And then we’ll see them long before they see us.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
We climbed back over the little ridge and started picking our way through the trees. My feet were numb from the cold and from the moisture still in my boots. I didn’t want to even think about what they’d look like if we ever got through this. My stomach was growling so loud, I was sure they’d be able to hear me from a mile away.
A branch caught me full in the face. I shook it off, kept walking, and took it right in the face again.
“Alex, don’t look right at where you’re walking,” he said in a low voice.
It took a few minutes until I got the hang of it. Once we got out from under the trees, the moonlight made everything come alive with an eerie glow. Every star was burning in the cold distant space, just like the night before. I stopped to catch my breath.
“Alex, are you thirsty?”
“God, yes.”
“The stream’s just up ahead.”
“Can we drink from it?”
“There might be a few little things swimming around in it,” he said. “Right now I wouldn’t worry about that.”
We heard the stream long before we got to it, the sound of the water carrying far in the night air. The trees opened up and there was moonlight shining bright on the rocks. Vinnie held me back for a moment. He stood there and listened for a long time, and then we both went to the stream, got down on our knees, and drank the cold water.
I drank as much as I could, and splashed the water on my face. It made me feel a hell of a lot better, and even made my stomach stop hurting for a while. Beside me I could hear Vinnie gritting his teeth as he splashed the water on what was left of his ear.
“I’m gonna tear up my shirt,” I said. “You need something else to stop the bleeding.”
“Hold on,” he said. “Let’s see what happens at the cabin first. If they’re not there, we can use the other stuff you boiled.”
“How far away are we?” I said. “It felt like we were running forever.”
“Probably not as far as you think. That trail has to be down here pretty soon.”
We followed the stream maybe a half mile until we found the trail. Vinnie bent down to look closely at the ground. He stood up and looked all around us. “They were here,” he said. His voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Can you tell how many?
“No, not in this light. I can make out some tracks, though. Somebody was here.”
We headed south down the trail, making as little noise as possible. When I stepped on a twig, the sudden snap was like a gunshot.
“Fucking shit,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
Vinnie let out his breath and kept walking. He seemed to know just how to pick up and plant his feet without making the slightest sound. I tried to follow in his exact footsteps. A few minutes later, he stopped.
“What is it?” I whispered.
He didn’t say anything. Then I noticed where we were. It was the stand of birch trees, looking ghostly white in the moonlight. This is where he had found all the bootprints, and now it all made a horrible sense. There was
