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People of the Fire(10)

By:W. Michael Gear

She ran her fingers through her long hair, eyes drifting to where Heavy Beaver climbed the slopes. "After you drink your soup, you'd better go and sleep some. It helps, slows the hunger."

He nodded, lifting the horn and drinking, feeling the tightness in his belly.

A man living without his people didn't live well—a problem Blood Bear considered as he stared down at the remains of his moccasins. Idly he fingered the hole where the ball of his foot had worn though the sole. The buffalo-hide jacket hanging from his shoulders looked tattered, mangy where the hair had begun to slip. Poor tanning on his part: he didn't understand how hair could be set in the curing process.

A man alone could only pack what he and his dog could carry. Over the last couple of years a kill meant feast. A credible hunter in the beginning, he'd honed those skills until he passed through the sage as quietly as an owl's shadow. Despite that, a lone man couldn't organize a trap, couldn't drive, or utilize the benefits of numbers of hunters in a surround. Rather, he had to creep cautiously forward, employing every benefit of terrain, wind, and cover to his greatest benefit. The years taught him the cunning use of ambush and stealth.

In spite of it all, his ribs stood out. The muscles of his frame remained perpetually gaunt. The growl in his belly might be assuaged by a gorging feast after a kill, but within days the carcass would be down to stripped bone. Starvation followed him, hovering like a phantom over his shoulder. He crushed bones for the marrow and boiled the grease from the fragments. This he skimmed from the top of the water before he drank it, spitting out the sharp chips.

From where he sat on the ridge top, staring out over the vast basin of the Mud River, he could look back at the Buffalo Mountains and remember the warm, friendly lodges of his people. In his heart, an emptiness beat in tune with each breath.

He'd led the party of warriors after Clear Water. Throughout the fruitless chase, the reserve in their eyes haunted him. At night, they'd whisper among themselves, demoralized by the theft of the Wolf Bundle. Each man's expression reflected the thoughts within: The Wolf Bundle has left the Red Hand. This man who leads us chased it away. This man, this Blood Bear, killed the Spirit Man. He broke the Power of the People.

Of course they had failed to find Clear Water and Two Smokes. Their hearts had lost the fire. One by one, his party melted away into the night to return to the camps, telling of failure, of defeat. When Clear Water left, she'd taken the soul of the Red Hand with her.

"I'll find it," he promised. "One day, I will find the Wolf Bundle. And when I do, I'll return. Hear that, my people? I will return to the Red Hand . . . and bring back the soul Clear Water and Two Smokes took from us."

Until then, he would not go back. The thought of their eyes chilled him; the way they'd look at him couldn't be endured.

Raising his gaze to the endless blue vault of the sky, Blood Bear shook his head, standing, lifting his clenched fist overhead. Hiraing to face the blinding sun, he swore, "By my blood and soul, I ask you to honor my request. Give me the Wolf Bundle! Give me a sign ... a way to find it! Do this, Wise One Above, and I shall humble myself before you. Hear me. Hear my plea. I would give my life for the Wolf Bundle. I would give everything dear to me!"

A stillness fell, the wind ceasing, sage thrashers going silent in the brush. Not even the call of a meadowlark intruded on the silence.

"Hear me!" Mouth working, he squinted up at the searing sun. From his pouch, he took his sharp chert knife. Crouching, he placed his left hand on a rounded quartzite cobble, looking down only long enough to center the sharp stone blade over the end joint of his little finger.

The sting of the knife gratified. The warm spurt of blood on the blade and hafting sent a shiver of excitement through his trembling body. He sawed through the tendons and ligaments, his face as hard as lightning-riven wood, severing the last bit of clinging skin.

Ignoring the pain, he plucked the bit of flesh from the blood-smeared rock and lifted it. "I offer of myself! With my flesh I bind myself to you! Take what you will of me, but give me the Wolf Bundle!"

With all his might, he threw the tip of his little finger up into the air, losing it in the burning glare of sun.

For a moment, he reeled, vision blurring. The glaring rays of the sun shimmered through the tears in his eyes to split the light into rainbow colors. For a moment, the image might have been a man, a man of light staring down at him, weighing his words. He blinked; the afterimage of the sun man burned darkly against his clamped eyelids. Trickles of water traced his cheeks as he opened his eyes, seeing only the too-radiant orb of the sun.

A puff of breeze cooled the tear tracks on his cheeks. A grasshopper clicked as it rose on the midday air. A bird warbled in the sage below him.