She looked up at him, seeing the lines that had eaten so deeply into his face. A perpetual squint, like that of a man in pain, etched his eyes. These signs, and his graying hair, showed that Two Smokes had passed the threshold to old age. But was he that old? No, Rattling Hooves had been born even a year or two before Two Smokes. Had life treated him so poorly? Her wounded heart beat with sympathy for the old berdache.
She reached up to hug him, burying her head in his chest to let tears relieve the hurt for both of them. For a long time, he held her, let her hot tears wet the front of his quill-decorated shirt.
"We're a pair, aren't we?" he murmured, stroking her hair.
"It's just like what happened to my father," she mumbled, and straightened to stare off into the distance, watching the hawk turning slowly with the winds. "I know how my mother felt now. Did we do something wrong? Did we offend some spirit somewhere? What? All I did was love him/'
Two Smokes took a breath and hugged her. "It wasn't you. He'd been picked for something by Spirit Power. Remember? I told you that day above White Calf's camp. I didn't know that it would happen this way."
"The others still say he's coming back '
Two Smokes slapped at a fly that had begun to buzz around them. "I'd like to believe that. Only I trust your dream. I thought I . . . well, I thought I felt him go. A berdache can do that sometimes, feel a person's soul like that."
"I guess I'll always have the memories. Dung and flies, I knew I'd have to share him with the Dreams. I could have stood that. At least I'd have him part of the time. But dead is . . . forever."
"Come on. Let me take you back to the shelter. I made some biscuit-root bread this morning. It should be about baked. I'll bet it's steaming and hot and so sweet your teeth will ache to bite into it."
She hesitated for a moment while he stood. "I don't know. Maybe I'll just-"
"Girl, you haven't eaten for days. Come on. If Two Smokes has lived through all the terrible times he has, then he's learned something from it. Food first. Keep your strength."
She let him pull her up. With her helping him over the rough spots, they worked their way along the slope. In places, the mud remained slick and treacherous.
As they topped a rise, the camp lay visible. The hangings looked worn and tattered after the winter. The yellowed sandstone of the outcrop looked dingy as did the trampled trails through the willows and along the slopes.
I'll never be able to come back here, she thought, hearing Two Smokes grunt as his bad leg took a jolt.
"Look! Someone's coming." Two Smokes paused, lifting a finger to point.
She squinted up the hill, seeing a person walking with a big black dog. "Looks like he's had a tough trip. Almost staggering as he walks as if . . ."
And she was running, pounding up the hill, barely aware of the throb in her lungs as she ran out of breath.
She slowed to a stop, lungs exhausted, legs trembling as she looked at him. He smiled weakly. A terrible cut on his cheek had scabbed over. His clothing hung in tatters, muddy and dirty.
The huge black dog had become a wolf, staring at her with wary yellow eyes.
"I'm back," he said in a raspy voice.
And she threw herself into his arms.
BOOK THREE
The Challenge of the Man
"Where are you?" Wolf Dreamer called from the shimmering wealth of the Spirals.
"Death . . . all is dying," keened the Wolf Bundle.
“The time has come.''
"Hear their pleas? Hear the last calls of suffering?"
"Wolf Bundle, the time has come."
"Perhaps . . . too late . . ."
Chapter 20
The hot wind blew down from the northwest, sucking the last remaining moisture from a land that had had no winter. The faint dusting of snow that had fallen at the height of the deep cold had vanished like the memory of a wistful smile from an old man's lips.
A man could count the number of rainstorms that had passed this year on one hand—and those had been cloudbursts that scored the earth and filled the drainages with muddy water, only to vanish into the hot air.
Where buffalo had once grazed, whirlwinds—said by some to be the unhappy ghosts of the dead—lifted yellow-white dust plumes to the skies and exhausted themselves.
Among the buffalo, the old and weak collapsed on the long trek between water holes. The cows remained gaunt. Fetuses aborted from the stress, their fragile carcasses marking the back trail of dusty imprints left by cracked hooves on the sunbaked clay. Behind the dwindling herds, buzzards and ravens followed, waiting their turn. The gorging wolves left red, chewed remains for the coyotes. After the coyotes slunk off with full bellies, the birds got their chance, and when they left, only the rodents could make use of the bleached bone. Not even enough remained for the shining bottle flies to blow.